


Sugar and Spice and Goddamn Romulans

by altilis



Series: Spock & his harem (OT4) [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Gen, M/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), Multi, Other, POV Minor Character, Rare Pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-19
Updated: 2010-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-12 18:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sybok finds Spock in the aftermath of Vulcan's destruction. Meanwhile, Starfleet's recruiting like they have a war on their hands. If he can have free baking privileges, get closer to the heart of the galaxy, and help Spock - well, why not?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. February - July 2258

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I would like to thank the amazing and wonderful wyntreaurora who managed to read and comment and SPAG this entire thing while doing so many other things, and was generally an awesome beta for this fic! Thank you so much!
> 
> Special thanks to kauniainen and sphynxle for doing [the art](http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/7106/bbangaltilis.jpg) and [the mix](http://sphynxle.livejournal.com/21772.html) for this fic, even when it took me forever to get the full piece to them! Thank you for the fabulous pieces! ♥
> 
> Loads of creative gratitude to cero_ate and sullacat for being around to hear me whine about plot and characters and any other thing I might have wanted to wax poetic about. Your support really helped me get through this thing, but you (and a lot of other people, you know who you are) have also helped me develop his character through test runs - thank you for that. I would have never had the confidence to take Sybok on as a main character without that little muse nursery. :)♥
> 
> And cero_ate also gave this thing a last-minute read-through to help me trim the fat and catch the errors I missed on revision - thank you!
> 
> This is the single longest thing I have ever written _and_ finished, and I partially owe its existence to the great works from leupagus ([this one](http://leupagus.dreamwidth.org/3881.html)) and screamlet ([over here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/96004)) for showing that Sybok can used in a more serious plot context rather than just comic relief or laughable villainy. I was already playing around with his character before I read their fics, but after, I was inspired to take the plunge.

Sybok sat on the curb between the parking lot and the Martian plain, beer in hand, eyes to the sky. He didn’t even like this particular draft, but it was the cheapest one on tap.

He sighed and threw his head back so he could stare up at the great swath of stars across the night sky. There was a place he wanted to go, right at the center of all of those stars. All he needed was a ship with multiple warp cores, an extended plasma power delivery system, and probably, a Starfleet-grade sensor apparatus.

He looked over his shoulder to the shipyards, back to the sky, and took another sip.

When he walked back into the worker’s bar some guys were yelling at the vid screen about their Velocity tournament being interrupted, so Sybok meandered towards the guys playing pool instead. The last thing he needed with a cheap draft was negative emotions.

“An unidentified ship has come into orbit above Earth,” The reporter on the vid screen said above the crowd, and when the guys at the table looked over, Sybok bothered a glance, too. “It’s lowered what appears to be a chain into the sky above San Francisco, and—eye witnesses describe a beam shooting in the waters of the bay—”

Conversation around the bar dwindled with each passing minute until the room was quite save for breathed words and the clink of glass against counters and tables. As the beam bore deeper into the Earth’s crust, some of the patrons even left, muttering something about family and emergency calls.

Sybok watched as people moved in and out of the bar, but he took a seat in the corner; he had no one to call. Yet when the drill was shot down by some lone and mysterious space ship, he shared in their raucous elation, clinking beers together, grinning and laughing. It was nothing more than a fluke of activity in an otherwise boring sector, a modicum of excitement to spice up the day and make you realize what you had to lose…

And then—Vulcan. Gone.

He could feel the eyes of the other patrons on his face, being the lone Vulcan in the crowd, until the last bits of information is also announced: the death of the seven ships, most of them born right in the shipyards the others worked in.

Everyone trickled out from the bar after that.

Back at his own room on the east side of an old barracks complex, Sybok sat heavily on the edge of his bed and let his face fall into his hands. He didn’t cry, but the grief still tightened his throat and consumed his thoughts. Sybok didn’t even know half the reason why: the planet may have given him all his gifts but it had almost destroyed him when he hadn’t fallen into their prescribed mold.

He hunched over more, bending towards his knees with his palms pressing against his eyes. Maybe it was for his father—or Amanda—or Spock.

\--

Shortly after the news of this destruction permeated through the Sol system, Starfleet announced two things: first, they need more ships, and the yards in both Riverside and Utopia were going to hire and train like they might have a war on their hands. Sybok had studied enough interplanetary history to suspect it himself. This would be the perfect time to strike.

Second, Starfleet broadcasted that they needed more people to man these future-ships, both enlisted and commissioned. Neither of these options looked spectacularly attractive: too much authority, too many people breathing down his neck, and too much questionably-important training in a cold, damp environment. The offer would be a contrast to what he was doing now—wandering between dry planets, looking for cheap quarters and something interesting to occupy his time in—but the prospect of tying himself down to a dominantly-human organization to be flung out into space on their daily errands didn’t sound appealing in the least. Yet he kept the enlistment brochure saved on his padd.

Two weeks later, when he was sitting down with his morning tea and reviewing the brochure once again (because it was the only thing on his padd that didn't inspire guilt or sorrow), news came in that a lone vessel had managed to limp back to the safety of Sol’s light. The reported state of the ship—cracked, damaged, without its warp cores—made the experts on news feed look uneasy, as if they were expecting it to burst apart in orbit.

Then they announced who led this _Enterprise_ from Earth to oblivion and back again: Christopher Pike, James T. Kirk, and Spock of Vulcan.

The grief that had been gnawing at his insides finally eased, soothed by a spreading warmth of relief. If they mentioned him here, without words for death, he should be alive. He should be on Earth.

His room was within walking distance of the shuttle port.

Sybok began packing his few belongings before his tea had begun to cool and called his manager right after.

\--

Wherever he went—the Mars-Earth shuttle, the train from the shuttleport to the shelter, down the street to the café and back—he got the same pitying looks, people who wanted to apologize for a planet Sybok hadn’t associated with for over a decade. He wanted to yell, It’s not my planet!, so they could stuff their “understanding,” but instead he focused on finding Spock.

Starfleet wouldn’t give him so much as a phone number, but the media knew where the heroes were, so Sybok hopped on a train towards Starfleet Academy.

He walked ten yards from the train stop before he saw a black uniform coming in from his left side, falling into step beside him before stepping in front of his path. Sybok looked down at the woman, glancing over her defined curves and her stern expression accentuated by a frown. “Sir,” the woman said, looking up at him from under the brim of her hat. “May I ask what business you have at the Academy?”

A smile pulled at the edge of his mouth, and he side-stepped around her neatly while replying, “It’s personal, if you don’t mind.”

“Sir.” One more step and she blocked his path again, blatantly glaring at him now. “In the aftermath of the Vulcan incident I have been authorized to remove—”

“That’s awful, isn’t it?”

The sudden change in subject has the woman stopping mid-sentence, flustered. “What?”

“The Vulcan incident.” Sybok replied. His gaze hadn’t wavered from hers since she stopped him. “What is your name, madam?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Zhao. Listen, I’ve been given authority to remove anyone who looks susp—”

“Did you lose anyone on those ships, Miss Zhao?” Sybok’s concentration focused to this single woman, scenery and passers-by blacking out from his awareness. “Friends? Siblings?” His mind pressed forward, right up against the pain that has begun to bubble forward. Now, time for the guess: “A sister, maybe?”

Zhao bit her lip, and while she maintained an admirably brave front with her fists at her side, Sybok could see the tears beginning to well in her eyes. He found the soft spot. “That’s none of your business.”

“It could consume you.” His voice lowered to make sure that nobody else can hear them, and at this point he couldn’t even see anyone else besides her eyes, wide with fear, frustration, and denial. A strong mind—he expected nothing less from Starfleet—but weakened by tragedy. “Let me help.”

“What—?” Human curiosity piqued, flickering behind her grief, and it gave Sybok the avenue he needed. Within a few moments, it was all over: he became aware of the light and sounds around them, and the tension in Zhao’s shoulders relaxed. She looked lighter, unburdened. He still had his gift; that was comforting.

Sybok waited a moment, allowing the glossy-eyed look on her face to fade and be replaced by an unfocused confusion before broaching his question. “I need to know where Spock of Vulcan lives.” Zhao looked at him, brow furrowing and lips parting—“It’s personal,” He repeated. “We’re family.”

Her first glance flickered to his ears, and then back to his face, fitfully trying to analyze his soft, warm smile. Zhao shifted her weight, looking away, and then she jerked her head to the south. “…that way. Faculty housing. I don’t know which one.”

“That’s all right.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Miss Zhao. I know you’ll honour your sister someday.” After a gentle squeeze, he walked past her, following the sidewalk south towards the inconspicuous apartment-like buildings off in the distance.

He stopped before the front steps of the nearest building and looked up at its front. Large, reflective windows and small balconies covered the front of it, ideal for the secretive yet romantic. Sybok didn’t have the knowledge to determine whether Spock was one or the other, but if he truly was an instructor as Zhao had implied, then. After bringing his attention back down to the ground, he gingerly stepped up to the front door and turned his attention to the list of names with their respective communication access.

‘CMDR SPOCK’ stood out amongst two and three part names. Sybok reached out to press the button with that name, and spoke towards the circular receiver embedded into the wall. “Spock.”

The light next to the receiver remained dark for several long seconds before it lit up green. Yet for almost a minute there was still no reply from anyone, and the light went dark again. “…Spock,” he tried again, “I’d like to talk to you.”

More seconds passed, and then the light blinked green. “Who are you?”

“Do I really sound that different?”

Nothing. Had he scared him off? “Enter.” The door clicked. “Ascend to the fourth floor, turn left at the lobby, and proceed to the door at the end of the hall.”

Sybok opened the door and followed the instructions to the letter. The carpeted corridors muffled his footsteps and everything felt strange, quiet, and eerie. The elevator made little noise as it rose to the fourth floor, even the ding of the door sounded soft and plaintive. It took him another dozen strides, down a corridor that sounded quieter than the first, to realize why the building felt so devoid of life—probably because it was. The solemn realization settled over his thoughts as he stopped in front of the door at the end of the hall. He reached over to press the small buzzer beside the door, and waited with his hands in the pockets of his coat.

The hallway was just silent enough that he could just barely pick up the soft footsteps on the other side of the door, a nervous and uneven gait, before he could tell that someone was directly on the other side of the steel. He gave a neutral look to the peep hole on the left side of the pocket door. After waiting another beat, the door slid open with a hiss.

Spock stood in front of him, no more than an arm’s length away. Sybok gave him a look up and down, taking in the full appearance of him: black trousers, a red shirt not hastily tucked in, just-combed hair cut in a typical Vulcan bowl, and those human eyes, still as wide and vulnerable as he had ever remembered them.

“…You’re so tall.” Sybok said quietly, and offered Spock a small smile. His brother looked back at him with an uncertain gaze, standing still for several moments until he stepped aside. Sybok walked into the apartment, looking around at the sparse furniture and neurotic organization: everything had its proper place . However, looking back at his brother as the doors hissed shut, it didn't seem like Spock mirrored his surroundings. His joy at seeing his brother turned to worry, just like when they were young.

Sybok sat down in one corner of the small couch in the living room and Spock sat in the adjacent love seat. Spock looked to the coffee table and his hands rested on his knees, and while his back was straight his skin was pale, paler than it should have been, and all of it intensified Sybok's concern. He leaned forward in his seat, elbows on his thighs and attention focused solely on the younger man in front of him. “Spock…”

The glance was brief, barely a flicker, up from the coffee table to him and back down again. “I suppose you have decided to reveal yourself…in the aftermath of the incident. With Vulcan.” Spock’s fingers curled, bunching the material of the trousers. “And you would like intimate details of my involvement in it.”

“No.” Sybok shook his head. Spock’s eyes grew a little wider, his brow furrowed: the very picture of naïve confusion. “I wanted to see you, and the Defense Force isn’t standing in my way anymore.”

Perhaps not the best comment. Spock looked away from and actually turned in his seat, giving Sybok a better view of Spock’s shoulder than he cared to have. Vulcan hadn’t been his home planet for over fifteen years, so it hurt less to refer to organizations that hardly existed to him, but the tragedy was still fresh here.

“…Apologies.” Sybok offered quietly, and leaned back against the couch, giving Spock some room to breathe and pull his control back from whatever state it was in. “If you’ll tell me, I’d like to hear it, especially from you. But if you don’t want to…I’ll still be here, if you don’t want me to leave right now.”

Spock took a breath, took another one, and swallowed once. His eyes closed—another obvious and fitful attempt to regain emotional control—and then opened, staring straight at the opposite wall. “It is impossible to accurately describe the most relevant events and consequences.” A more level tone this time, with only the slightest waver.

“Then describe it inaccurately.” Sybok suggested, his hand sweeping out in an inviting gesture. The movement drew Spock’s attention. “Tell me what you want me to know. I won’t hold it against you—I’m your brother, Spock.”

“You are my half-brother.” Spock corrected, though his voice lacked conviction, and he closed his eyes as he slumped back in his seat. “And I do not desire that anyone know of my experience. It is the entire reason why I am here, instead of working at more productive locations on campus—”

“Working won’t make the grief you feel for Vulc—”

“Do not address my grief, Sybok." Spock glared at him. All that emotion, all that pain so vivid and hot, flashed over his face and eyes. "And do not attempt to alleviate it through your methods. You will not succeed.” All of the emotions he saw disappeared again, receding back behind a fragile veneer of control. Sybok would let him have it; he held up his hands.

“I won’t try. But there has to be something I can do for you.” He looked around the apartment and all of its neat-and-tidy corners, valiantly resisting against the universe’s tendency towards disorder, just like his brother. A small electric kettle sat on the counter. “Do you still drink tea?”

Spock gave him an uncertain look, followed his gaze to the kitchen, and then looked back at him. “…yes.”

“Will you let me make a pot for you?” Spock let out a slow breath through his nose, and then nodded. Sybok went into the kitchen to begin the usual preparations: boiling the water, finding the teabags, and digging out two mug and saucer pairs from the cabinet. As he waited for the water to boil, Sybok leaned against the edge of the kitchen counter, and Spock stayed where he was. His shoulders were slumped, and he had a hollow look as he continued to stare listlessly at the coffee table.

Sybok knew he wasn’t really staring. He also knew that the longer he retreated into his own mind like that the more difficult it would be to snap back into the real world. The water began to boil, and the fact Sybok could hear it bubbling softly in the kettle told him it was too quiet.

“Tell me about your schedule.” He asked as he primed the teapot, swirling the boiling water before dumping it, and then filling it again before adding the teabag.

“I sit, I eat, and I meditate.”

“What about sleeping?”

“On occasion.”

Sybok looked over again as he let the tea sit and brew. Spock had yet to move and he wasn’t going to bother him about it, so he decided to bring the mugs and the pot over to the coffee table.

Spock shifted in his seat, and his gaze finally moved—back to the present and the now, instead of whatever he was dwelling on. “…my tea is usually accompanied by sugar.”

At this, Sybok gave a small, soft smile; it seemed he hadn't grown out of that sweet tooth. For an instant, he could see Spock sitting there in front of him now and Spock munching on a frozen popsicle then, barely five and letting it melt all over the outdoor patio. A simpler time, though if he could bring an ounce of that carefree era back to his brother, then his visit would be a success. “Where is it?”

Spock pointed over to the kitchenette once more. “The left cupboard.” Sybok retrieved the sugar cup without another word, grabbed another spoon to serve it with, and then returned to the couch. Spock silently added two teaspoons and swirled it into the hot liquid before putting the spoon aside and watching the steam curl up from the tea.

They said nothing, and Sybok was content to let him have the thoughtful silence, until Spock took the mug in his hands and sipped once.

“…Mother died.”

The grief of losing Amanda, as wonderful a mother as his own, hit him deep in the gut, but he held himself calm for Spock’s sake. Once Spock began to talk about it, starting with the cliffs and the Katric Ark, he didn’t stop talking until late that night. Sybok didn't try to stop him. When the topic would get difficult (and Sybok could see Spock struggling to articulate it objectively), Spock would rise from his chair and pace, as if the act of moving could help him force out the details.

Spock jumped around in time when it sounded pertinent, but in the end Sybok understood the important facts, knew more than the communiqués Starfleet gave would ever reveal. Captain Christopher Pike had led and lost the _Enterprise_ , as well as possibly any further deep-space opportunities for his career, a guilt that Spock expressed in no few words. James T. Kirk, a rebel but a leader, charismatic and stubborn with an intelligent and tactical mind to rival Spock’s own; he would gain the most accolades from this event. Leonard McCoy was the arbiter of Kirk’s success on the _Enterprise_ , a close friend of the man but a somewhat ambiguous ally to Spock as well, if one took into account his kindness in the adrenaline-crash following the end of combat (soft touches—that was all Spock said about that). Nyota Uhura was Spock’s student, friend, confidante, and lover, too skilled for her rank and too kind for what Spock gave her in return.

The Narada, the ship that had taken everything from him, had been captained by a mad man with a vendetta and originated from legend and nightmare. The imagery of hundreds of scaly metal tentacles curling out from the center towards him, surrounding a gaping maw of past and present death, perpetuated into the fabric of Spock’s subconscious: he couldn’t sleep, meditation helped little, and so he was haunted. An arm stretched out to grasp at particles of light, and a monster of a ship expanding before his eyes to swallow him whole.

Somehow, Spock finished his explanation on the couch, sitting next to Sybok with his hands folded in his lap and shoulders slouching forward. By the end of the story Spock was victorious—he was alive and Nero and his ship were destroyed—but he looked defeated and drained. Sybok recalled what Amanda had done when they were distressed, and what he had learned to do in her absence.

He wrapped an arm around Spock’s shoulders. At first there was tension, but it eventually melted away to leave Spock calmer than before. Now he just looked exhausted, right on the precipice of passing out. “You should try to sleep,” He murmured, squeezing gently at his shoulder. “I’ll let you be.” Sybok stood from his seat.

Spock looked up at him with half-lidded eyes, but said nothing. Sybok walked for the door, and just as the front doors parted for him, he heard a soft sound from behind him. “…Sybok.”

He looked over his shoulder towards Spock. “Yes?”

“Will you—” Hesitation, then in Vulcan, “You will visit tomorrow?”

Sybok grinned. “If you want.”

"I do."

\--

Sybok went to visit the next morning, arriving an hour earlier according to the train schedule, and kept Spock company the entire day. They didn’t touch the subject that had consumed their first visit. Instead, they talked about Starfleet, the Academy, how exactly some becomes a Commander within six years of graduation, and why Spock had joined this organization in the first place.

Save for one video call that Spock received in the afternoon, it was only the two of them until after dinner. They talked little over a filling meal of fusion Sino-French dishes, every one vegetarian except for the chicken box Sybok saved for himself. Spock watched him eat that with some uncertainty, temporarily distracted from his own noodles, but said nothing.

Then, after Sybok had helped his brother clean up the table and they were just about to settle in the living room again, Sybok slid his hands into his pockets. “I should go.” It was late again, and he could see the fatigue etched into Spock’s expression.

“Where are you residing?” The non-sequitur surprised him, and he had to think for a moment.

“The shelter on Bell, in the city.”

Spock folded his hands together in his lap and looked from one end of the coffee table to the other. “Would you object to staying here instead?”

Little things like this reminded Sybok that his brother was still partially human: he had given no logical sign that he needed a new place to stay, and yet here Spock was offering it. It could have been only to have some company—but whatever Spock’s reasons, he was grateful for it. “No, I wouldn’t object to it.” Sybok grinned. “Let me get my bag and check out.”

About two hours later, Sybok lay on the couch in Spock’s living room along with a couple of blankets and a extra pillow. Spock was asleep in the other room and the entire apartment was dark except for the dim light that glowed through the tinted windows.

He had been in worse situations than this: hungrier, colder, and lonelier than he was now. Yet his heart still pulled for that spot in the sky, that nearly unreachable star his mother had told him about so many years ago. Maybe Spock could help him get there.

\--

When Sybok woke up it was half past ten and Spock was working on something at the breakfast table in full Starfleet regalia. His black uniform was crisp and pressed, his hair was immaculate, and the edge of unease and fear was conspicuously absent. Curious, though still groggy, Sybok rolled onto his side and asked, “Going somewhere?”

“I have an appointment with an acquaintance at the Embassy building.” Spock took another sip from his mug and then looked up from his padd to look towards Sybok. “Would you like to join me?”

“Do you want me to join you?” Sybok asked, sitting up slowly. He breathed through a tight pull over his ribs, then lounged back against the cushions while he rubbed at his side.

Spock watched with that silent, intense stare, apparently scrutinizing his bed-hair, wrinkled t-shirt, and sleepy eyes. “…I believe that he would be interested in meeting you, when you are in a more respectable state.”

Sybok chuckled as he ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll get ready, then.”

  
They took the train.

Around them he could hear whispers that didn’t mesh with the hum of the engines: pitiful things about the destruction of their home planet stirred up by the appearance of two Vulcans sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. Sybok leaned back in his seat and looked around to meet stares, while Spock stared at his knees deep in thought.

“So, this man,” Sybok started, speaking in Vulcan for some small privacy. “How do you know him?”

“We met in the aftermath of the…incident.”

“Benevolent?”

“I am uncertain.”

“Oh.” Sybok gave Spock an uncertain look. Why would they trek all the way across the city to have lunch with an unknown quantity? “Then I hope he offers a good lunch.”

“Are you entirely focused on food?” Spock glanced over, unimpressed.

“Simple needs are simply met," he said wisely, to which Spock didn't respond.

  
The Embassy building, a pillar of reflective glass reaching up towards the clouds, was the central location for Earth’s major embassies with little pet embassies of the lesser-known planets, just three or four stories tall, attached to its sides. Sybok paused on the street to look up at it and compare it to his childhood memories, but Spock kept walking despite his reminiscing, and he had to catch up with a short jog back to his side.

Inside, their footsteps echoed off a white marble floor, the sound mingling with conversation that filled the hall right up to the tall ceiling. Sybok turned to get a look at the entire place with its flags, pennants, lights, and—“Sybok, the elevator is arriving.” And he stepped again, turning until he came back to Spock’s side.

They stepped in to occupy the elevator box by themselves, and after five seconds of quiet humming they stepped out into an open hall with plush red carpet and open windows that showed a looming view of the city. The heat was dry and familiar. The silence—not the lack of voices but the lack of thoughts—disturbed Sybok the most, more than the eyes he could see looking at him from behind cubicle half-walls.

“Where is Elder Selek?” Spock asked the young man behind a high desk while Sybok continued to look around. Half-curious, half-worried that he may have to face his father here.

“He is expecting you in office three.” That pulled Sybok’s attention forward, looking at the impassive secretary who only glanced between the two of them and said nothing more.

“Thank you,” Spock said and began striding off down a smaller corridor. Sybok continued to follow, his hands in his pockets and hoping some outward nonchalance wouldn't tempt fate.

They emerged into a quiet room that was a combined office and lounge, homely enough to have a couch and a small round table but official enough to host a long desk complete with a fancier communication console than Spock had in his apartment. At the table was a place setting for two with a delicious, orange-red curry taking up most of the center space, but also their host. An old Vulcan dressed in a practical black suit rather than flowing formal robes rose slowly from one of the chairs, and he smiled at them.

It wasn’t a smile or a grin like Sybok gave in turn, but something that came straight from the eyes with the faintest quirk that wrinkled at the edge of the mouth. As the old man stepped nearer to them, he carried a calm, confident aura that mimicked one Sybok hadn't seen for a while. It was almost indistinguishable from how he remembered his father—but this wasn’t cold, unemotional, brick-wall-of-a-man Sarek.

“Spock,” The old man said fondly, and then looked to Sybok. His brows rose in surprise, and he stepped closer as if to get a better look at him. “And…Sybok?”

Sybok’s eyes widened as he stepped back. “How do you know my name?” No one had picked up his name or identity without his knowledge. Nobody knew his name that he didn’t want to know his name. Yet here this old man was looking up at him, eyes soft with a knowing sadness (pity?), and Sybok had never seen him in his known life. Sure, there were blank spots in his memory, but normally he would still have at least some feeling about whether he had ever met a person before. This man was a threat.

The old man ignored his question and looked back to Spock, who simply inclined his head. “I will order another place setting.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Sybok stepped up as the old man fell back towards the communication console. “Answer my question.”

“Sybok.” Spock said sternly, grabbing Sybok by the arm to hold him back. “Do not be impolite.”

“This isn’t about manners.” He wrenched his arm back from Spock’s grip, and focused his sharp glare at the elder Vulcan once more. “I can be impolite if the situation calls for it.”

However, the man continued to ignore him, tapping a button on the console and ordering, “Please provide another lunch setting to room three,” leaving Sybok standing there in the middle of the room, equidistant from the lunch table, the office, and the door. His hand was tight at his side, not ready to fight but ready to defend himself from the unexpected. Slowly, the other Vulcan turned around and stepped back up to him. “It would be easier to explain to you if you would join us for lunch.”

Sybok wasn’t in the habit of refusing a good meal, especially if he knew the food was safe, so his fist relaxed, barely. Spock and the elder Vulcan sat at the place settings while Sybok took the empty seat, where he could see the faux steel of the table reflecting up at him. He looked between them, trying to decide what exactly was the reasoning behind his identity leaking out, but there was something—nagging at him—

“Sybok,” Spock leaned back in his chair his hands folded together. “Do you recall the paradoxes you used to give me as a child? The time puzzles?”

“Yes." Of course he could remember teasing Spock until his head spun, and then watching him go scampering off to Sarek to find a definite answer to an indefinite problem. Amanda would just shake her head. "Why?”

“This, may seem to be one of that series, and you will have to believe me despite a lack of proof, but, Elder Selek is…”

“I am also Spock.” The elder Vulcan chimed in, and Sybok’s gaze snapped over to the other side of the table, eyes wide, brow furrowed, and mouth parting to voice some sort of sane objection. Spock had mentioned Nero coming out of a different time, but he didn’t mention anything else that came from such wild (and unbelievable) circumstances, and at the time he did believe that it might be some creative license born out of how distraught he had been at the time, but…

There were some similarities between them, if he looked closer: the round humanity of the eyes, the knowing gaze that masked over any ignorance and only becoming more knowing with age, and now, the identical body language..

Sybok closed his mouth and took a breath, wondering what would be the least stupid question to ask either of them. It wasn’t often he would think that he would meet a time-copy of someone he knew, let alone his half-brother…but perhaps validity was in order. “What was I doing, when you found me in the garden in 2238?” Sybok asked, suddenly; no one else had been there and he had told no one and Spock had likely kept his silence about it as well. He didn’t know how similar their pasts would be (was there even a copy of himself, a brother to this Spock?), but if they did share similar pasts, that incident would stand out.

“You were crying.” The elder Spock said solemnly, looking elsewhere as he reflected on the memory. “I recall you mentioned your mother, and the anniversary of her passing. I was curious why you were displaying such an obvious show of emotion…and your subsequent words influenced the decisions I would take later in life.”

“What?” Sybok gave the elder a strange look again, and Spock was also leaning forward in his seat. “Which decisions?”

“My—our,” The elder inclined his head in Spock’s direction. “Decision to join Starfleet in lieu of following our father’s footsteps to be an Ambassador after the Vulcan Science Academy. You had postulated the idea of not following the road set out in front of us, but rather to make our own decisions concerning the progression of our career and our lives.”

At last, Sybok smiled fondly; he had wondered if that conversation had ever gotten through at the time, but had subsequently forgotten about it. He had felt glad (next to the grief) that Spock had chosen a career outside of the Science Academy – for one, it explained his continued survival instead of suffering the same fate as billions of others on the planet. “I guess you are Spock, then,” Sybok laughed off his other insecurities with a chuckle, and finally looked back at his brother, who looked a little uncomfortable as he glanced out the window. “You actually listened to me?”

“I always listen to you, Sybok,” Spock pointed out as if it were obvious, glancing at him with that half-annoyed set of his jaw that came and went with his moods. “Whether I adhere to your advice is another matter entirely. I have not given up logic as you have, and I still converse with our father.”

The reminder that their father was probably close by, that he might have to meet him, sent a cold thrill down his spine and into his stomach. There wasn’t anything his father could do—he couldn’t exile him from a planet that wasn’t his—but to face that man, to answer his questions about what he had been doing—that would always seem unattractive. Therefore, Sybok endeavored to change the subject, looking back at the elder version of his half-brother again. “So, you also had a brother,” He began with the obvious, thoughtful. “Did he leave as well?”

“He did.” And Sybok heard sadness in his tone that almost struck a chord with his own emotions, that sense of missing something close that should be there but wasn’t. “He was exiled.”

“It seems your universe isn’t too different from ours.”

“On the contrary, there are a few significant differences.” The doors hissed open and the young secretary came in and handed Sybok a plate and silverware, and then left.

Throughout the dinner they compared notes about their lives, where the universes met and where they deviated, likes and differences between people and places and institutions. Overall, it was the most intellectually stimulating lunch he had had in years, ever since he dropped by (crashed) that conference on Betazed  
“Sybok,” The elder then said at the end of their meal, setting down his glass of Altair water. “May I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course.” Sybok was already feeling comfortable with the old man, and if he was indeed his brother, then there was nothing about his past life that this man didn’t already know.

“I have found a suitable planet for Vulcan colonization, which our Father and the other survivors of the high council plan to settle; we are leaving in two months. Do you intend to join the colonization efforts?”

Sybok was silent for a long few moments, looking from the elder to the younger, staring down at his plate where a few smears of curry circled around the edge of the plate. “No. They exiled me from their home planet, wherever that will be. I doubt they’ll let me back in just because their population has been cut. I would be the last thing they want in their gene pool.”

“And if you were forgiven?”

The idea was something he had considered before, but now it seemed further and more unlikely than when any time before. “Still, no,” Sybok finally said, and shook his head. “I know where I’m not welcome. They would try to impose their logic on me more than before. No thanks.”

“Then where do you intend to go?” Sybok shrugged, and gave no answer to the elder Vulcan. “If you have no alternative planned, might I suggest joining Starfleet?”

The first thing that came out of Sybok’s mouth was a laugh, and then another. Crazy old man. “I’m trying to avoid the rigidity of my father land, and yet you suggest I join a military organization like Starfleet? Did my other self join Starfleet?”

“No, he did not.” And there was that grave sadness in the elder’s tone again, the origin of which he couldn’t pinpoint in his ignorance of the future (but he wouldn’t ask, since he had read too much literature relating about knowing the future of one’s life). “But, at times, I wish that he had. My brother was a brilliant scholar, and you are likely of the same caliber.”

“Flattering.” Sybok deadpanned. “But there’s nothing Starfleet can give me that I want, and I’m not about to go through their curriculum to stagnate in their ranks—”

“You want a starship.”

The air thickened between the three of them again, this other-knowledge coming out of the blue. Spock looked bewildered, but Sybok openly scowled; omniscience had its uses, but uncovering his deepest desires in front of more impressionable minds was not one of them. “…I don’t want a starship,” He finally said, looking more to Spock as he said it. “There are places that I want to go that require it. Again, I’m not going to go through the rigors of order and authority in order to get there.”

“And how else will you manage to transport yourself where you want to go?”

Sybok paused, frowned, and then looked to the side, out the window and towards the bright, gleaming skyline of San Francisco. “I don’t know.”

“Then consider the alternative.” The elder Vulcan gave him one of those subtle and faint smiles again, and then pushed back his chair and slowly stood. Sybok and Spock stood with him. “I must attend to another appointment. I thank you both for joining me for lunch. Spock—I hope you will reach your own decisions with sound judgment and confidence.”

“Thank you,” Spock inclined his head. “Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon,” Sybok parroted with a polite nod as well.

“Live long and prosper,” The elder held up his hand in a traditional salute, mirrored by the younger Vulcans (“Peace and long life,” Spock reciprocated on behalf of them), and they left the room with a quiet buzz of thoughts between the two of them that didn't break until they had reached the safety of Spock’s living room.

“I have a class to monitor,” Spock said, beginning to gather up two padds and stuffing them into a bag. “You will be here?”

“I might go out,” Sybok sat back on the couch with a sigh, closing his eyes. His mind was still circling with thoughts. “But I’ll be back.”

Spock nodded, and then slung the bag strap over one shoulder. “Very well. Rom-halan.”

Without someone to focus his thoughts on, they bunched together and became twice as loud, so Sybok draped himself over the couch and took a short nap.

\--

That afternoon, and subsequent days after when Spock went off to “work,” Sybok stood in the window and watched the students cross the campus out in the distance. The activity wasn’t exactly meditation, but it was close as he was ever going to allow himself to get.

He could never be one of them, going through the motions of study to emerge as a cookie-cutter officer. Not that Spock filled any mold—but that was what their family tended to do: set themselves outside of the norm and then create spectacular things (what had he done so far?) within the confines of everyday life.

When he couldn’t stand to stare at grass and fog any longer, he settled down with one of numerous PADDs in Spock’s lounge and read: the news, unsealed documents and reports, and the new and ever-changing Federation maps that were updated daily through Starfleet. The farthest reaches of the Federation still stretched at least fifteen thousand light years from the center of the galaxy, with only the borders of the Romulan Empire reaching closer to that far-off region of space.

\--

One Friday afternoon, more than a week after the lunch with the Elder Spock, the communication console set off to one side of the living room chirped, and the screen flashed with relevant information. “MESSAGE : JAMES T. KIRK.” Spock didn’t say anything about expecting messages, and he hadn’t said anything about messages not to take, so Sybok felt it was at least his duty to take down a message. He slid into the chair in front of the console and pressed “accept.”

A blond-haired man (that he recognized from the news reports) wearing a red cadet jacket with the front open appeared on screen, at first looking off-screen and then directly at the camera. “Hey, Mr. Spock—” And then he saw who was actually on screen and smiled sheepishly. “Oh, sorry. Is Spock around?” The man looked over his shoulder towards the empty living room behind him.

“He’s at work.” Sybok leaned back in his chair, taking in the sight of this cadet (assuming, from the uniform). “Did you want to leave a message?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kirk looked away again, hand coming up to press his fist to his chin, contemplating. “Just tell him that I’d like to talk to him about something important, and I’d like if he called me back.”

“I’ll tell him that.”

Kirk smiled. “Thanks, mister…?”

“Sybok.” He returned the smile. At first, it looked like Kirk was disarmed by the sight of it, and then he grinned wider.

“Sybok. Thanks again.” Kirk reached over to the side of the screen and the video blanked out, and the console returned to its default menu screen.

  
The issue didn’t come up until they were having some post-dinner tea, the two of them sitting across the breakfast table as Spock poured into the earthen mugs.

“James Kirk called.”

Spock didn’t say anything until he set the teapot down again and added two spoonfuls of sugar to his own tea. His spoon turned quietly around, stirring it in. “…What did he require?”

“He didn’t say, but he wanted you to call back, and I said I’d tell you.” Sybok let his own tea cool slowly on the saucer, and focused instead on his brother’s motions. Every little move was suddenly calculated and hesitant; with the spoon tucked neatly to the side of the cup, Spock seemed unsure where to put his hands, and finally settled on folded them near the edge of the table. “…Should I have told him otherwise?”

Spock didn’t look up from where he stared down at his hands. “No, that was an appropriate answer.”

“Then what are you so uncertain about?”

“I am not uncertain.” Spock looked sideways at the refrigeration unit. “I am only predicting his possible requests and my responses.”

“I don’t think he’s the type of man you need to meet with so much…predetermination.” Sybok nudged the sugar bowl in Spock’s direction, encouraging. “Call him back.”

Spock glanced up at him, silent, and then began to add a couple generous spoonfuls of white sugar to his tea.

Later, Sybok pulled Spock into an impromptu game of kal-toh, which stretched on past midnight until they both decided to leave it for tomorrow evening.

Spock didn’t call.

\--

The next Friday, Sybok slept in, dozing from ten o’clock until nearly noon. Spock wouldn’t mind; he’d be up and presentable by the time his brother came back from “work” and errands. They planned to go down to the wharf, Spock for the potato chowder and gelato shops and Sybok because he had a taste for seafood that was hardly ever satiated.

Through his haze, he could hear the video console chirping again. Sybok rolled onto his other side, yawned, and continued thinking about the intricacies of warp theory that he had discussed with Spock the previous night. Finally, it let out a long beep, and the message echoed throughout the lounge room.

“Spock—hi.” A familiar voice. Mister Kirk. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry, for the trial today and the testimony and everything. I didn’t mean—I didn’t try to blame you for anything, even what you did on the bridge...I know why you did it—hell, I made you do it—and I don’t hold it against you, and…hopefully you won’t hold it against me.” A sigh. “There’s a ceremony on Tuesday, and I think you deserve to be there as much as me. I know you do…I’ll see you there.”

By the end of the message, Sybok sat up mostly awake, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and wondering what was happening across campus, and what his brother was doing there. He stumbled into the bathroom for a sonic shower, as the questions formed slowly in his thoughts.

  
Spock gave his platter of crab, mussels, and shrimp and accompanying bread bowl of clam chowder a fairly disgusted look, as far as Vulcans were concerned. Sybok grinned, ignored it, and began with the mussels, scraping them from their shells with a fork.

They were so buttery. Delicious and buttery.

“Supposition,” Sybok began, while hunting for another mussel among the mass of seafood. “You don’t come here very often.”

“I do not.”

“Do those fried artichokes taste good?”

“They are acceptable.”

“And the garlic fries?”

“More than satisfactory.”

“That’s good.” His hand darted out to take one and just missed. Spock had scooted them out of the reach of his hand across the table. Sybok laughed. “Nice defense.”

They talked of the pier and the wharf for a few minutes more, the salt scent of the water and the touristy feel of the boardwalk, but a brief glimpse of golden hair of a woman at the far end of the restaurant reminded him what he wanted to ask Spock  
“He called again this morning,” Sybok said, prying open a crab leg. “Mister Kirk.”

Spock stiffened, and his motions to dip a fry into ranch dressing slowed, cautious. “Yes?”

Sybok buttered the meat and savored the taste before he replied. “He started apologizing about what he said during a trial, which had me thinking—what trial is he talking about?”

The garlic fry stirred round and round in the bowl of ranch dressing multiple times before Spock finally ate it. Sybok waited patiently until his brother decided to tell him what this entire mess was about. “In the aftermath of the incident, it has been necessary for Starfleet to…conduct internal investigations into the conduct of its crew. Under my distress I—violated several ethical codes of conduct, enough to warrant a court martial.”

“…and?” Sybok hadn’t exactly been expecting them to forgive what Spock said he had done, kicking people off the ship and onto wayward planets and then strangling them in front of a crowd when said people returned.

“Mister Kirk testified earlier today about the altercation we shared on the bridge.” Spock reached for his glass of water and drank, not a sip but a hearty swallow, and then set the glass back on its coaster. “The verdict will be released on Monday.”

“Will it matter?” Spock looked up, brows narrowed in slight confusion. Sybok elaborated, “Do you want to continue in Starfleet? The older you—”

“Selek.”

“—yes, Selek—he mentioned the colony. Did you want to go there, instead?”

Spock speared another fry with his fork and stirred the ranch sauce again. “I have not yet decided which option would be more beneficial. Logically, any contribution to accelerate the establishment of a new colony would supersede my obligations to Starfleet…”

“Why would you say that?” Sybok frowned, cracking open another crab leg.

“Are you questioning my conclusion?”

“Well, yes. Let’s assume that you go to assist in their reconstruction. What will they have you do? Build houses? Tally supplies? Donate sperm?” Spock gave him a sharp look at the last item, looking the closest to ‘aghast’ as a Vulcan would allow himself. “Okay, maybe not the last part, but in all sincerity—what will they have you do that can’t be done by someone else less gifted?”

“I could assist in the generation of power and its distribution.”

“You could…but our father can do that. Every other physicist on this planet could do the same thing. Electric fields and material power delivery are for children.” Spock looked away from him, and Sybok leaned forward to speak softer to him. “Spock. Reconstruction efforts don’t look for creativity and imagination. They already know what they want to build, and it will probably be close to identical to Shi’Kahr." Personally, Sybok preferred if they emulated the beach-side city of Regar, but they didn't exactly value his opinion. "From what I’ve read of your reports—and don’t look at me like that, what else do you expect me to read while you’re gone?—I think you’d be…what’s the word? Bored. You create; you experiment; you solve chess puzzles in your free time. Starfleet…it will give you something spontaneous to react to.”

“I do not believe the working environment will be as welcoming as you envision it to be.”

“Why? Is there something that is making it unwelcoming?”

“Kirk.”

Sybok quirked an eyebrow. “One man, Spock? You can be on another ship that doesn’t have him.”

“It is not that simple.” Sybok heard a new, darker edge in Spock’s voice, hinting at anger and annoyance, the same tone he had used when describing how he strangled Kirk to within a breath of his life.

“Then explain it.”

“I contributed to the construction of the _Enterprise_ ,” Spock said in a low tone. “Therefore no other individual would be able to take advantage of its capabilities to the same extent as I would, as a science officer.”

Sybok smirked. “It’s a matter of pride.”

“This cannot involve something that does not exist—”

“Don’t give me that propaganda, Spock,” Sybok cracked another leg. “Every sentient being has pride, especially Vulcans. It pushes us forward so that we strive to be superior to every other race. If you didn’t have pride, you would have stayed on Vulcan under their microscope.”

“Regardless, the problem remains.” Spock stuffed two fries in his mouth, and looked at Sybok as if expecting a solution.

“Are you sure that it will actually be a problem? If he’s just on the ship…”

“…They told me they are awarding him the _Enterprise_. He will be my captain, my superior, and afforded the direct opportunity to exact revenge for my previous treatment of him.”

Sybok remembered what Kirk had said in the message left, and the hint of sorrow and hopefulness that ran through his tone. From what he had read of the young man, more than what he had heard from Spock, gut feeling and instincts told him that Kirk wouldn’t be so childish as to carry over a grudge from their first acquaintance. On the other hand, the very possibility that Kirk could have the power to do that awoke a powerful, protective urge in his chest that he hadn’t felt in years. As a brother, he had been absent for the worst parts of Spock's ostracization , too wrapped up in his own business and politics, but here lay another opportunity to redeem himself. "What if I joined you?”

Spock blinked. “Excuse me?”

“If I could work on the same ship as you, would that make you feel more secure? Would you stay with Starfleet then? I’m sure they’re still hiring.”

Spock looked aside again, thinking. Sybok could almost see his thoughts clicking together, analyzing the benefits of having a brother, an ally, and a fellow Vulcan on a ship out in the middle of deep space. He wasn’t foreign to the feelings of cultural alienation himself; for three years out wandering between colonies Sybok only saw one other Vulcan, and that was the man he saw in the mirror. He doubted that Spock would be immune to it, years spent on Earth aside.

“You said that you rejected Starfleet’s ideals and authoritarian hierarchy.” Spock pointed out, looking at him with reluctance and skepticism.

“I’ve gone through worse.” Sybok smiled, reassuring.

The smile made Spock look away, as if he had seen something that he shouldn’t have. Still uncomfortable with Vulcan emotional displays, clearly. “I would not deny your support, though I suggest that you review your commitment more thoroughly.”

“I promise I’ll sleep on it, and then in the morning you can get me the literature I need, yes? Forms and waivers?”

Spock looked at him silently, searching his face, and then inclined his head while looking down at the table. There was a bright glint he was trying to hide, but Sybok could see it clear as day.

\--

First, Spock gave him a few forms to fill out straight from the public Starfleet network. Once he submitted those to the appropriate office, they gave him more forms. Sybok scrolled through pages and pages of square boxes, scratching at the padd to fill out his information.

He was sitting on the couch filling out his educational qualifications when Spock returned on Monday to announce that he had cleared the criminal court martial, but that Starfleet was conducting a separate, private investigation into his ability to command. That had been a sullen evening.

Sybok was stretching his legs out on the floor that Friday detailing his previous employment when Spock came in, grabbed a coat, and began walking back out.

“Where are you going?” Sybok called out, not looking up from the padd.

“Dinner.” Spock said from in front of the hall mirror, meticulously smoothing out his bangs against his forehead.

“With?” Not that he cared either way; his little brother was free to have a meal with anyone he wanted.

“Doctor McCoy.” One of the men mentioned once during Spock’s recall of the Narada incident. When had that been arranged?

“Oh.” Sybok watched Spock fix and crease the collar of his coat. “You’ll keep your communicator on? Not that I’ll disturb you.”

“Of course.” Spock looked over his shoulder towards Sybok. “I shall return later tonight.”

“Have a good meal.”

Spock nodded once to him then left, the doors hissing behind him.

\--

Training to be an enlisted crewman in Starfleet wasn’t the most difficult thing he had gone through in his life, but the constraint of it was unfamiliar (and just as he expected). An early-morning schedule, a black-emblem uniform, and the constant feel of being ordered became a part of his everyday life. The order and restraint made him antsy, which could (and did) bother Spock, until finally he’d excuse himself in the early evening for a free, uncharted walk around the city, where he could at least breathe a little easier without always feeling like he had to keep himself in check.

In lieu of more challenging materials, he tapped into (with permission from one of their science professors, of course) the Starfleet officer curriculum, not limited to a refresher course on Warp Theory and Warp Core construction. Except now he was feeling something—entirely unfamiliar, at least in a long while.

“How does this…?” Sybok said under his breath. He balanced a stylus between two fingers by his ear, twirling it back and forth, and frowned.

“Is something wrong, Sybok?” Spock called from the desk across the room, paused in his own reports or grading. He had turned in his chair to face Sybok, head tilted to the side.

“This formula,” He gestured vaguely over the padd. “I can’t see how these variables relate, how this…”

Spock had made his way over to the couch and sat next to him to see what he was studying. “This is not very complex; velocity is only a third order function of thrust and core power—”

“I know, but what about…”

“There are not that many components in this formula, Sybok.”

“I know!” Sybok stood from the couch, running a hand through his hair. “This should be simple. I’ve seen it before; I’ve seen more! You remember the calculations I showed you from the Shi’Oren? My astrophysics work?” Sybok looked over, and Spock nodded mutely. “I’ve done this all, I can do it, but it’s just—not—” His hand flapped through the air uselessly, trying to explain himself and failing. Frustrated, his hand clenched into a fist.

“…perhaps you should rest.” Spock suggested from the couch.

Sybok looked over, tempted to hold him in contempt for trying to redirect his anger, but what else could Spock ask him to do? He was only angry at himself, and it was nothing foreign. This wasn’t the first time he had been frustrated with his own mind, grasping for something that wasn’t there, but it had been a while. Time should have healed it, he had hoped it would heal it, but now it seemed only due diligence would bring his knowledge back to him.

“No,” Sybok stepped back towards the couch, sinking into his old seat and taking the padd back into his lap. “I’ll just look at it a little longer. You’re right. It’s not difficult; I just need to refresh myself on parametric surfaces. Any suggestions?”

\--

One evening in late April, Sybok noticed that Spock was being more meticulous than usual. He ironed civilian shorts and trousers, took up time in the bathroom like he was about to meet the president of the Federation, and checked something on his communicator every ten minutes. Yet, above all, Sybok noticed when Spock splayed out tape, scissors, ribbon, and wrapping paper on the ground, and devoted his entire attention to what looked like a shoebox.

Sybok mulled over the possibilities from the couch, snug in the corner of the cushions while he read through The Warp Barrier and Transcendental Theories. “…Birthday?” He ventured.

“Yes.” Spock wrapped the paper around the long sides, cutting a rough estimate of the length he needed.

“Is it for someone I know?”

“No.”

“Are they coming here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to hide in your bedroom? I don’t have to disparage your name if you don’t want me to.”

Spock looked up, scissors paused as he gave Sybok a stern look. “…that will not be necessary. You will meet Nyota eventually; this may be the most opportune time.”'

“Nyota?” Sybok raised his eyebrows. “Your lady-friend?”

“I have, in fact, many female acquaintances—”

“You know what I mean."

“It is any wonder that I do.” Spock began taping edges together (maybe over-doing it). When the paper-and-tape stage was done, he stuck a bow accompanied by some curled ribbon on top of the package, and then leaned back to examine it. “Do you think this will be adequate?”

“It’s a perfect representation of your everlasting, Vulcan love, Spock,” Sybok smirked. “Predictable dimensions confined by weak adhesives, juxtaposed by flamboyant accessories.”

“…I will attempt to refrain from asking subjective questions of you in the future.”

“We’ll see if your attempts work.” The buzzer dinged from the door, and they both looked towards it. “Should I answer?”

Spock was busy shoving supplies into the storage compartments under the coffee table. “No,” He snapped the cupboard door shut, and then lifted up the package to set on the table’s surface. “I shall.” He stood, smoothing out the front of his button-up shirt, and then looked over at Sybok. A single glance was enough to communicate what he wanted (“Make yourself presentable,”), and then answered the door.

“Nyota.” Sybok was almost struck by the softness in his voice, and stood up to greet this Nyota. As he stepped nearer to the door, he saw a woman wearing a beautiful black dress partly covered by a knee-length coat, holding a red clutch at her side. Her wavy hair fell softly around her face and her shoulders, and she looked…quite radiant. Radiant enough to remind Sybok how long it had been since he had been intimate with a woman (or the nearest alien gender).

“Spock.” She smiled, and stepped in to give him a quick kiss, and then looked over Spock’s shoulder towards Sybok. “Who’s this?”

“Sybok, madam,” Sybok gave a deep, flourishing bow from the waist up; he didn’t even have to look up to know Spock didn’t approve. But he did glance Spock wrapping a protective arm around Nyota’s waist.

“My brother.” Spock supplied to offset her confusion.

“Brother? I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“It’s complicated—” Sybok began.

“—and best discussed in another environment.” Spock finished, and then walked over to grab the package off the coffee table, walking over quickly before Sybok had the chance to strike up an engrossing conversation. “I shall return later.”

Sybok smiled, and gave them both a casual salute off his temple. “Have a good time…and happy birthday, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Nyota waved as she and Spock began to walk out the door. “Nice to meet you, Sybok.”

“Likewise.”

Spock gave him a vaguely protective look, half a glare and half a worried, wide-eyed pout (subtle, but definitely a pout), before the doors shut on their exit.

\--

Spock and he met with the elder Spock—Selek—for lunch at least once a month, checking the progress Selek was having with organizing the colony. Every time they stepped into the Embassy Sybok felt that he was being watched, scrutinized, and every time Sybok expected them to turn the corner and come face-to-face with Sarek. His father knowing his present location meant the end of his freedom, regardless of his action (or lack thereof) following it. Someone would be watching.

One Wednesday afternoon in June, Sybok wandered through a park. His engineering class had released early—the exam had been painfully easy. With the sun shining outside with the upcoming summer, he didn’t want to let a good day go to waste, so he steered away from the faculty dorms or the library and made his way towards the park by the shore. Another try at pseudo-meditation wouldn’t hurt, and neither would some idle people watching against the scenery of the bay.

He found a nice bench under a tree surrounded by some grass, stretched out his arm over the back of the bench, and reflected on the stability of his life. He’d been sleeping in the same bed (futon) for the last three months, almost a record, and the food wasn’t bad, either. Everything felt okay, stable; he supposed he could get used to this lifestyle, in time.

A black hovercar sat in the parking lot not far from his seat, and no one got out. Sybok could barely see the numbering of the plate, but he could recognize the colors of the stickers in the corner. Registered to a diplomatic organization. He got up from his seat and began walking to the other end of the park and the second lot and took a seat. After waiting five minutes, the same black hover cruised into a slot on the far side, and rested there.

For a moment, he considered the possibilities. He could ignore it; it would probably follow him. Or he could find out if it was just a mistake, risking a small part of his pride and time. It might be fun, Sybok decided. So he leisurely rose from the park bench, stretched, smiled to a young man walking his dog, and walked over to the driver's side of the car. Sybok tapped on the tinted glass.

When the window rolled down, he saw another Vulcan sitting there, dressed in a simple black uniform with green calligraphy that snaked down the left side. He recognized the layout from what he remembered of his father's uniforms, back when he accompanied him on his ambassadorial tasks. This was an attaché from the Vulcan Embassy. "What do you want?" Pleasantries were for people he actually wanted to talk to.

The man glanced up at him with hard, emotionless eyes, and reached over to the console of the hover to pass his fingers over a button without breaking his gaze. Something switched from red to green. "I want nothing," he answered.

"Forgive my skepticism." Sybok leaned his elbow against the curved top of the door, his posture loose and casual as if they were having an afternoon chat. "Why were you following me?"

"Sarek requested that I monitor your activities." Incapable of lying, Sybok noted to himself wryly, though they must have not thought him too much of a threat if he could get this willingly. However, it still made his stomach clench tight, like it always did before he felt he needed to take the next shuttle and run.

"And why would he want to do that?" His question was met with an unwavering expression and complete silence. Sybok sighed, and looked up, around the park and the hover lot. "I can call Protective Services."

"I have diplomatic immunity." Sybok may have been projecting some smugness into the man's voice, but regardless, he knew it was there.

"They won't know that until you've already lost me," Sybok reminded the attaché, looking down at him again. The man sat as rigid as ever. "Then what are you going to tell my beloved father?"

"That you are avoiding suspicion for ulterior motives," the man answered. Sybok knew what that would mean: a second set of eyes, harder to evade than just one.

"Do you have some paper in there?" Sybok gestured a hand to the interior of the vehicle. "A pen?"

"Why?"

"I want to write something, obviously. Now do you have it or not?"

"Yes."

"Can I have some?" It was like talking to a child with these minions. Sybok knew they really weren't that slow (most of the time), but they made things difficult when they pretended they were. "Thanks," he said as the man gave him a single sheet of paper and a stylus from the middle storage compartment. He flattened it out on the hood of the car and began writing, the electronic ink blossoming under the rounded tip of the stylus.

Curious and feeling strangely social, Sybok ventured, "Where did you study?" Silence. He smirked a little. "From the way you punctuate your v's, you're from one of the Northern clans." Sybok signed all the spirals of his name without lifting the point, the long last stroke flicking off the side of the page. Done, he folded it in half, and bent down to give it back with the stylus. "Don't let your inferiority complex affect your work; you wouldn't be here if my father thought you were just a farmer." Sybok grinned as the attaché plucked the paper from his grasp, and then he turned his back to the hover and walked away.

He walked straight for the apartment. There, he took off his shoes and stretched out on the couch, draping his forearm over his eyes. Hopefully, 'Leave me alone, you fucking patriarch' would convince Sarek to call back his lackey (lackies?).

  
When Spock came back from his work, Sybok waited. He managed to get through evening updates, dinner, and almost began studying warp theory on the couch again before he finally broached the subject. “Sarek sent a raptor after me.”

“For what purpose?" Spock asked from the kitchen, putting away dishes and tea cups.

"I don't know." Sybok tapped the corner of the padd screen, stared blankly at the page, and then glanced up to where Spock was standing. "If you see him, tell him to stop? I'm not doing anything."

"You are completing enlisted officer courses at Starfleet."

"I'm not doing anything criminal, Spock, which is the point here."

Spock came over to sit in the adjacent love seat, grabbing his own padd off the coffee table. "Considering your record—"

"My record doesn't say I'm criminally insane." Spock gave him a skeptical look. "Officially, it doesn't. Expressing emotions doesn't make someone insane."

"You destroyed a man's mind."

Sybok lowered the padd to lay flat in his lap. "I had to."

"Such violence is never necessary, Sybok." Spock brought his legs up to sit cross-legged in the love seat, fingers tapping away at the padd.

The temptation to argue back lingered at the surface. He knew what to say, so you wouldn't be violent for Amanda?, but that sounded distasteful even to his own thoughts. Amanda had always been a point of unity between them, and he didn't want to besmirch her name with something so petty, and so soon after her death. Besides, the question would be rhetorical: Sybok knew what Spock would have done for Amanda. He also knew it would needle Spock's emotions, another discomfort he didn't want to bring him—at least, in this capacity.

Back to his problem, though, if he couldn't get Spock to approach Sarek about this undeserving surveillance, he needed to find someone else. After a few minutes of silence between them, Sybok asked, "How can I contact the older you?"

  
His older younger brother—the other iteration—Selek and Sybok met for an impromptu lunch five blocks away from the Embassy building at a Thai restaurant. Sybok found out soon enough that they had amazing Tom Kah and cashew chicken. Yet, "Are you certain you don't want something?" Sybok asked Selek sitting in front of him, watching him eat while ordering nothing for himself. "Lunch is usually…cooperative? Social?" He reached over to take a sip of his drink.

"I have come to give you my advice, per your request." Selek had that strange not-smile on his lips again. It eased Sybok's concern about the Vulcan sitting alone at the back corner with a plate of stir-fried morning-glories.

"Do you talk with Sarek at the Embassy?" Sybok asked.

Selek inclined his head. "When it is necessary."

"Four days ago I intercepted one of his subordinates," Sybok explained in between spoonfuls of the Tom Kah. "He was following me according to Sarek's orders, supposedly." He glanced up, and Selek's look told him to continue. "If it would be possible—"

"I shall see if you may be granted your privacy." Selek interrupted.

Sybok blinked for a moment, unfamiliar with Spock (because this man was still technically a Spock) answering questions he hadn't asked. Maybe that was what Spock always felt like. Then he smiled. "Thanks."

  
After that, he only saw the cronies once every three days—or he thought he saw them; they stood at a distance and disappeared after he stepped into the city proper for his afternoon walks. Sometimes he tried to guess how long they would tail him before giving up, but they occupied his thoughts less and less as the weather warmed into July.

\--

“I will be attending a meeting through the evening hours,” Spock had told Sybok during breakfast, while gathering his briefcase together and then pulling on his uniform jacket. “Could you purchase food while I am absent?”

“Sure,” Sybok had answered from the breakfast table, still digging in leisurely to his waffles and giving a blind wave over his shoulder as Spock left through the front door. Grocery shopping. He had done it once and he could do it again, and Spock’s steady income made it all the more enjoyable.

  
Once he got to the store he took his time, grabbing a couple of pieces of fruit, a cereal box, and the breakfast drink mix that he liked (but Spock didn’t). He perused through the simpler items—sugar, needed that—until he happened to wander by chance to the “baking” shelves. Instant gelatinous desserts. Cups of frosting. Instant cake mix.

Instant cake mix with a rather attractive front cover.

Instant cake mix that only required water.

Sybok picked up one of the boxes that said “Super Moist” and “Strawberry,” checked the ingredients out of habit, and then tossed it into his basket. He kept walking past the boxes, and then grabbed “Spice” off the shelf as well.

  
The communicator buzzed from the breakfast table, skittering across the smooth surface as it vibrated. He flipped it open, but let it sit on the table. “Yes?”

“Sybok,” Spock’s voice filtered up at him. “I will be returning to the apartment within ten minutes."

Sybok looked down at the bowl nestled in his arm, whipping the batter with a spoon in the other hand. "Okay, I'll be ready with something to eat when you get back."

  
After Spock arrived and stepped out of his boots by the door, he stepped cautiously towards the kitchen. The counters were clean—Sybok had made sure of that—but twenty strawberry cupcakes were arranged in a neat tower at the center of the table, spiraling up in three haphazard levels. "These are cupcakes," he declared, puzzled.

"I hope you like strawberry," Sybok said as he stood from the couch, walking to stand beside Spock. "It was the first one I picked up." Spock reached out and plucked the highest cupcake off the tower by its red-white striped paper cup, examining it closely. "What are you waiting for? Try it!"

Spock nibbled at it, keeping the cup pinched between two fingers. Drawing away, licking his lips, "It emulates the original flavour rather well."

Sybok grinned and sat at the table. "Great, now tell me about this meeting."

"Starfleet Medical and Command have determined that I am psychologically fit to continue serving in my potential capacity," said Spock as he sat down at the table. He took another nibble of the cupcake, and then continued. "And they do not seek to limit my next posting."

"And?" Sybok leaned forward in his seat. "Have you decided yet?"

Spock looked down at the cupcake, then glanced up at Sybok. "I submitted my request for the _Enterprise_."

"Just to be there?"

"To be Kirk's first officer," Spock muttered, and then he stuffed half the cupcake into his mouth.

Sybok laughed and swiped a cupcake for himself. "It'll be fun, Spock, with all those humans. And it's only five years."

\--

Throughout the last week of June and the first week of July, Sybok helped his brother pack up his belongings into Starfleet-certified transporter boxes. Not all of it would go up to the ship: many of the apartment's furnishings came with the apartment, things like bedding and towels and sentimental little trinkets would go into storage somewhere in Saskatchewan, and the rest would be beamed up to their quarters. Spock had five boxes full and ready by the time July graduation concluded, while Sybok had barely filled one, and he wasn't going to opt for another.

The Friday morning they were scheduled to depart, Sybok woke early to see the dawn. He didn't know when he would next see a natural sunrise, especially this familiar one. Yet when his eyes slowly opened to the dark ceiling, only dimly lit by a faint morning glow, he saw a shadow moving to obstruct it.

"Spock?" he asked, yawning, stretching his arms out.

"Yes, _sa-kai_?" Spock replied in from the direction of the lounge window, not more than a few feet from the couch.

Sybok smiled a little, that was nice, being called a brother again, and let the blanket fall to his waist as he silently cursed the ache in his ribs. Reluctantly, he stretched through it, and at the ends of his stretch he could see Spock sitting at the far end of the window, mimicking all the right angles of the chair he sat in with his hands folded in his lap. Spock was still in his pajamas: a plain, loose, white t-shirt and pajama pants printed with the Fischer projections of sugar molecules.

Sybok stood, stretching out the muscles of his back. "How can you be so awake already?" he asked, and when Spock gave him a look, "Discipline, right. Of course." After taking a deep breath and releasing it in a slow sigh, he walked over to grab another chair from the breakfast table and brought it over next to Spock, sitting down next to him in front of the window. The chair was cold against his bare skin as he leaned back against it, but the shiver passed quickly enough.

"You'll be there?" Sybok asked, watching the horizon turn bright orange.

"I have given my word to several people, including Mister Kirk."

"Don't make me ask the question again, Spock. You'll make me feel like my staff sergeant."

"When the _Enterprise_ departs its spacedock, I will be on the bridge," Spock finally answered him, glancing over. Their shared a look briefly, and then looked back to the sunrise.

"Good."


	2. August '58 - May '59

The first month on the _Enterprise_ was all about settling in: finding the right position on his twin bed, meshing together the bathroom habits of three other people across two sinks and one shower, and adapting to a fluid work schedule and a not-so-fluid rank structure. He hardly saw his brother within the first three weeks—not that it surprised him. Spock was up there on the bridge, Commander, First Officer, Science Officer, advising the captain, talking to Starfleet, and initiating new scientific projects every other day. So in the mean time, Sybok familiarized himself with the layout of the ship (how could he not, while he was slowly progressing through each deck with the floor polisher?) as well as the people that were closer to his rank and position.

Sometimes, he took time to explore alone. If he couldn’t sleep, he’d walk down to the cores down in Engineering and give them a good, long stare. The blue glow was soothing, though figuring out how to modify them still gnawed at him. He knew he could, but he still couldn’t _quite_ wrap his mind around the mathematics—and then Keenser would show up and tell him off for the nth time. It would take more than a little green man to dissuade him.

The rest of the time, Sybok socialized and familiarized himself with the crew of the _Enterprise_ from the bottom up. Sometimes he’d wander to the security circles, laughing loudly about vaguely-anonymous exploits and “one time in combat training” (which he couldn’t empathize with, but they didn’t know that). Sometimes he’d chat with the nice ensigns from Communications, or Engineering, or, in this case, Services. One particular ensign that caught his eye was Ensign Isaura—cheerful, insightful, and she knew more about Sybok's job than he did. They passed each other by on Decks 4 and 6 during weekly maintenance, and met every other week for galley services.

This particular week the galley was quiet, empty; just the two of them cooking specialty meals. Sybok had apples cooking in the oven, and she had chocolate chip cookies tucked in the secondary oven beneath. She read something on her padd, and he tapped through pages of Comets of My Heart—another epic romance from the _Enterprise_ ’s vast digital library. A guilty pleasure in one respect, research in another.

She read Micronite Monthly, an architectural magazine, and by the time the deserts were cooked, they had discussed Gothic and 21st century Andorian architecture and Sybok was three down, seventeen to go on befriending everybody that has anything to do with the galley.

He’d have them down to first names by the end of August.

\--

With each consecutive month on the _Enterprise_ , Sybok slept better, longer. There would still be the odd night when he would wake up after the falling rush of failure, Mother gone (because of him?) and leaving everything he knew behind, but otherwise he rested. His mind sharpened, he asked Spock more and more about his research, and it became easier to get bored. Thankfully, he could still pillage the libraries, and no one seemed to mind that he seemed to focus on human romances from the last hundred years. Most of them were sickeningly bright and sweet, but he wanted that passion, that joy, and not just his attempt to emulate it or the guarded happiness from those around him. The crew of the _Enterprise_ , as much as they tried to conceal it within themselves, was still grieving.

However, one night in October, he didn’t sleep at all.

Most of the planets they had come across so far had been geologically interesting but unpopulated; the most intelligent life they had come across was some seven-legged phosphorescent beetle that Spock wouldn’t stop talking about the following day. This time, they found natives. In fact, there had been tribes of them, happily waving about their three red antennae and welcoming them with a feast of oily salads and roasted eyeballs. Wonderfully cordial natives that then took Spock’s refusal to eat said roasted eyeballs as a sign of grave disrespect (it was their divinely-dedicated dish, of course!) and ended up sticking him with spears, swiping at his head with the dull end of the same weapon, and forcing him to run down some not-quite-cliffs towards a raging river (filled with poisonous eels and leeches and sentient vines).

Maybe the last detail was part of his imagination, but the rest he had heard from the captain himself, whose shirt was equally bloody and ripped, but not damp, as he had glimpsed of Spock before the Sickbay doors shut in his face.

Spock would survive, of course, Sybok told himself as he stared up at the dark ceiling, his roommate snoring away just across the room. Best medical facilities in Starfleet. An excellent doctor. Unlimited time. No obviously lethal injuries.

But he had injured his head. Sybok could remember the blood dripping down his temple when they carried him from the transporter room to sickbay. He didn’t have to be dead to be gone; Sybok knew that well enough. So he didn’t sleep, occasionally turning so he wouldn’t get bed sore, and waited until Alpha shift started.

McCoy was rubbing a hand over his face just outside the post-op room when Sybok came in. Sybok opened his mouth to ask a question, but McCoy raised his hand, and shook his head. “Not right now. After Alpha, maybe, but not right now.”

Sybok nodded, thanked the doctor for his efforts, and then left.

  
After lunch, when he was done peeling and cutting some potatoes, Isaura suggested they try another pie, this time with a lattice top.

  
Sybok didn’t spare any time He dropped by his cabin only to wash his face and his hands, swung by the galley one last time, then set off to visit his brother. With the changing of shifts there were less nurses in the outer rooms than usual; he ignored all of them anyway to make his way into the post-op room, carrying a box in one arm. No doctors stopped him as the pocket doors hissed open.

A look towards the bed at the far end of the room showed that Spock was awake—sitting up—but his complete attention was set on constructing…what looked like a card palace, currently three levels high.

Spock held a single card poised in his hand, scanning the building for architectural defects, and then placed it gently on top of two v-towers. When Sybok stepped over to grab a chair from off the wall with his free hand and bring it to Spock’s side, Spock finally looked up at him. “ _sa-kai_.”

“Spock.” Sybok sat down while placing the box on the bedside shelf, right next to a padd. Briefly he looked at the card palace and wondered how long Spock had been awake if he could construct that, and then looked at Spock. “How are your injuries?”

Spock pointed to a padd sitting on a shelf beside his biobed. “That may provide a more comprehensive explanation.”

“Probably,” He took it, tapping the screen to activate the screen so that a long list of medical jargon popped up. Readable, but he always preferred hearing it from the source. “But how do you feel?” He set the padd in his lap.

Spock shifted his gaze to the card palace balanced precariously on the bedside tray. “I believe that my injuries are mostly healed with minimal tenderness, but Doctor McCoy is of the opinion that I should recuperate here for another night.”

“And your opinion?”

“I would have preferred to return to work earlier today.” Spock looked over at the box on the table

“Of course.” Sybok smiled, unsurprised. “Who gave you these cards?”

“Doctor McCoy.” Spock looked back at him. “He insisted that I not direct my department projects from bed, so when I protested on the grounds of intellectual stagnation, he lent me these cards, and suggested I play with them.”

“And it looks like you’re doing just that,” Sybok reached over to pluck one of the cards off the flat top of the palace. There were other uses for the cards, but he would suggest that later. “How long have you been working on this?”

Spock held up his chin a modicum. “I have spent forty-two minutes on this incarnation.”

“And how many incarnations have you created?” It was an old, familiar line of questioning. As a younger man he would often stumble upon Spock knee-deep in multi-coloured blocks arranged in metropolises that sprawled all over the bedroom rug, more often than not the second or third wave of the imaginary civilization.

The pocket doors hissed again, and when they both looked up, they saw McCoy walking towards them. “Commander, how—what are you doing?” The man’s expression passed from shock and surprise to amusement, finally smiling with a low chuckle. “I can’t get you to give it a rest, can I?”

“You told me to ‘play’ with the cards, Doctor.” Spock folded his arms over his chest; somewhat defensive, but Sybok could see that Spock wasn’t as stern as he usually was. Maybe it was the drugs.

“Yeah,” McCoy held his hand out for the padd still lying in Sybok’s lap, and Sybok passed it to him. “I meant games something like solitaire, or gin rummy with your brother here…” Spock blinked at him. “Nevermind. I’ll show you later.”

Spock began dismantling the card palace, knocking out the foundations without hesitation before beginning to stack the cards back into decks in both hands. “Is there something preventing you from demonstrating these games now?”

McCoy glanced up from the padd. “…No, but I’m thinking you need more rest, if the bed’s telling me you’ve been awake for the past—”

“Doctor.” Spock held out a handful of cards to McCoy. “I have been resting, if not necessarily ‘asleep.’ Vulcan meditation states are entirely unique, and your biobed may be unable to tell the difference.” Spock looked to Sybok, who (upon recognizing that Spock needed support for this pseudoscience), simply nodded.

McCoy rolled his eyes, and then set the padd aside before he took the cards and sat down on the side of the bed. He got the rest of the cards from Spock’s other hand, and then tapped the edge of the full deck on the surface of the tray. “You know how to play gin rummy, Mr. Sybok?”

Sybok scooted his chair closer. “I’ve heard about it before.”

“That’ll do.” McCoy began dealing out cards. “What’s in the box?” He looked over to the box on the side shelf.

“Peach pie.” Sybok leaned back in his seat, watching the cards slid along the tray.

“Really?” A wide grin spread across McCoy’s face. “D’you plan on sharing?”

  
Spock turned out to have all the mathematical strategy and none of the luck, while Sybok had just the opposite. He won three games in a row until McCoy broke his streak (twice), and they played another game until Spock announced he was drowsy and passed out the next minute. They ate the pie throughout their games—a slice here, a slice there, a slice for victory—and when Spock fell asleep, McCoy and Sybok split the last piece between them.

“How are you at poker?” McCoy asked and stuffed a large piece of peach into his mouth.

Sybok shrugged. “It depends what the stakes are. Why?”

“Me and Jim wanted to start a small tournament around the crew.” McCoy jabbed at the crust. Sybok made a note to check whether he could make it softer next time. “Maybe you’d want in? We’re working with pretty low stakes for the first time.”

“Sounds wonderful. I’ll try it.”

\--

Ever since he had been on Engineering's watch list for "people not allowed to linger around the warp cores," Sybok had been trying to orchestrate a way in. First he had looked at the blueprints (with Spock's supervision, of course) to see if there were more unorthodox ways to travel there, but on further inspection Sybok decided that neither could he bend or fit in such a small space nor could he use water pipes or power conduits.

Solutions fell to a matter of the local crew. Sybok asked some of the lower level crewmen, nobody with a stripe on their sleeve, to see if he could weasel his way in. Each and every time they redirected his questions, until finally somebody told him to ask Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott.

"How well do you know him?" Sybok had asked his brother first.

"He is overly fond of the _Enterprise_ as an entity. You may ask Nyota for more details." Spock had answered, and of course Sybok hadn't asked her, because he didn't want more people involved in this as it was.

So he investigated the man himself. Terran native, born in the northern reaches of the British Isles, who had angered someone in a high place beforehand and therefore spent two years on Delta Vega. Sometimes he dropped by the poker matches with his own bottle of Scotch, but Sybok hadn't sat across a table with him yet and the next one wouldn't happen until May. It was December now.

Sybok wondered if two years in cold isolation would affect a man's desire for warm, home-baked goodies.

  
The Dundee cake was by far the most complicated thing he had baked. The ingredient list was a mile long and making it look like the archive pictures took a pain-staking amount of effort, placing the almonds in concentric circles out from the center of the cake. Then to top things off, he had to do it twice, because he only noticed half-way through baking that he left out the treacle. (What was treacle, anyway? So he spent another hour researching that.)

The second product came out well. He tested it on every coworker he could find available in the middle of beta shift, asked them for their honest opinion, and finally turned in for the night, pleased, with four hours left to go in gamma shift. The third one (in all its tested and perfected glory) was brought down to the main engineering deck right before lunch during alpha shift, when he knew the chief engineer would be mingling around (hungry) with his red shirts.

"Hello gentlemen, ladies," Sybok announced to the crew present, holding the tray in his arms. The cake was visible through the transparent aluminum dome. "I thought you all might want a cake after that dilithium trouble last week."

They swarmed around him like ants, and Sybok and his cake were marshaled into the nearest rec-room. He let them slice it up as they wanted, but when they were all subdued by the pastry, he meandered over to Scott and, by virtue, the same little green man who had told him off the first (and second, third, fourth...) time.

"Do you like the cake, Mister Scott?"

"Aye," Scott answered around a mouthful. "Just like my mum used to make it. How'd you get the recipe?"

"Just some network searches, and then trial and error." Sybok smiled and tried to ignore the suspicious looks coming up from the little green man. "I was wondering if I could ask you a favour."

"Yeah?"

"I wanted to be able to look at the warp cores again."

"Oh," Scott swallowed, and then he squinted at Sybok, nodding a little in recognition. "You're the one that's always hangin' around them."

"Indeed, I am," Sybok inclined his head; no point denying it. "They're beautiful to look at--"

"Aye, they are."

"--and I meditate better when I can see them. So, could I, possibly...?"

"I don't know." Scott jabbed at his cake again with his fork, eating another piece. "It'll still look awfully strange if anyone comes askin'--"

"There's a few shortbread recipes I've wanted to try, and share," Sybok added.

Scott looked at him, looked down at Keenser (who shrugged), and then back up at Sybok. "I'll see what we can do. There's no reason to deny someone my lady's beauty, is there?"

Sybok grinned. "No, there isn't."

  
The next week, Sybok watched the warp cores pulse in the quiet din of beta shift, fingers curled over the cool steel railing and thoughts meandering between the past and the future.

He also took cookie suggestions from the core's maintenance crew.

\--

The holiday season came and went for Sybok, an entire week at the end of December where he didn't do much but work and sleep. Everyone put in their special requests for jello, fruitcake, dressed turkeys, ceremonial bread, caramel popcorn, sugar cookies with funny ice-men designs, and a mix of breadcrumbs and vegetables that didn't match his idea of "stuffing." Sybok didn't know half of what he was making, but he followed the instructions well enough. Isaura taste-tested all of his works, and even offered her decorating shift when he declared that he couldn't make another sheet of fudge if he wanted to.

One of the largest rec rooms had three fake Christmas trees with a convincing pine scent and synthetic needles that reminded him of California trips as a child, but the allure of decorating faded after the fifth box of holly balls, and the fiftieth yard of glittery silver—what did they call it?—garland.

It was worth the hard labour and ridiculous traditions to finally be among that room and its satellite party clusters on the twenty-fourth of December. Gaiety choked the atmosphere to the point where it nearly put Sybok on a high of his own, and he meandered through the crowds with a glass of eggnog in hand. The taste had its roots in a memory he couldn't reach, but he took comfort in its creamy richness all the same.

Sybok wandered between the crowds until he found his brother, standing thoughtfully over a large pile of presents that had accumulated underneath the Christmas tree. "Looks nice, doesn't it?" Sybok noted, stepping up to his side. The eggnog swished dangerously in his glass, drawing Spock's eyes and his concern. "Who do you think is going to deliver all of that?" He took a large gulp of the eggnog, just thinking about it.

"Deliver?" Spock quirked an eyebrow.

"Deliver. _Tefu_. You know." Sybok made a vague gesture with his free hand. "Everyone's going to show up to work expecting to see what Santa brought them."

"You have been reading extensively about Terran holiday traditions," Spock observed, concerned still as Sybok took another big gulp.

"Maybe--or maybe I've associated with too many humans?" Sybok offered a grin. "Not always a bad thing, just look around," He looked over his shoulder towards the mingling and dancing crowd, and then turned back when a round of off-key caroling started up. Their attempts at music making were admirable. "One thing you have to admit about our people, Spock: we don't have parties like this. Look at this /emotion!/ It's heavenly." Sybok downed the rest of his drink, leaving just a milky film around the interior of the glass.

Yet for all his euphoria at the situation, Spock was looking at him with narrowed eyes. He leaned closer to Sybok, voice lowering beneath the hum of the crowd and the carols, and into Vulcan. "You do not maintain your shields in this?"

A tight smile pulled at the corner of Sybok's mouth. "You think I have shields to raise?"

"You risk madness."

"So?" Sybok snorted, and leaned away from him. "Your lady-friend looks like she wants to find some mistletoe for you," he said as he waved at Nyota across the room as she walked closer. "We'll talk some other time, yes?"

Spock nodded once. "Indeed." And then he looked to where Nyota was approaching. Sybok knew that his attention had shifted completely, so he smiled to himself and merged back into the crowd, intent on getting another round of eggnog.

\--

New Year came and went without as much fanfare, but work dwindled and the whole crew suffered a bout of laziness. There were birthdays in January, too, Kirk and Spock most importantly (in his mind), but neither seemed primed to celebrate or even acknowledge the passing of the date. Spock spent the evening with Nyota, disappearing with her after dinner, while Kirk was nowhere to be found after alpha shift.

However, Sybok had sent a giant chocolate cupcake to both of their quarters regardless of their wishes. He at least received a "Thanks," among his messages the next morning from Kirk, and then a knowing smile from Nyota while passing her in the hall. "Chocolate?" she had asked him. Sybok had simply smiled back.

The next ridiculous Terran holiday to come up among the crew was some sort of ancient worship of Saint Valentine. He had heard of it before, had even been on Earth when it occurred all those many years ago, but the origins still eluded him. Isaura had tried to explain it (giggling the entire time) while they spread pink frosting across heart-shaped cookies, but by the end Sybok simply understood it to be another product of an irrational and passionate race looking for another way to express themselves. Marvelous.

One extremely large order of those cookies, as well as their vibrant red cousins, was ordered by the entire department of nurses in sickbay. Sybok chose to deliver it himself, thinking he might enjoy bringing the bearer of gifts to some very friendly nurses. Besides, it was a nice-enough place when he wasn't worried over his brother's mortality.

When he came in through the pocket doors, the first one that saw him was the blue-eyed, brunette secretary in the nice white dress, but by the time he had walked over and set the box down on the desk, more than a dozen had popped out of the adjacent rooms to swarm the desk, each of them asking questions like, "Are these sugar cookies?", "Did you use a sugar free frosting?", "How did you get them so heart shaped?" After ten minutes of a technique inquisition, they piled at least eighty percent of the cookies onto a large platter and spirited it off to Doctor McCoy's office.

"Excuse me," came a voice from behind him. Sybok turned to face it from where he had watched the nurses disappear to see another one. He recognized her, vaguely: a young woman with golden blonde hair, a little taller than the rest even discounting the height from her boots, and looking at him and the cookie box with observant and open eyes. "You're Mister Sybok, aren't you?"

"There's no need for the 'mister,'" he told her with a smile, "Sybok will do."

"Oh, okay, Sybok." She offered a small, hesitant smile back. "You're Mister Spock's brother, right? I was wondering if, maybe—" she leaned over the basket, looking down at the cookies, "—if you knew if he liked these kinds of cookies? With frosting?"

"He might; he has a sweet tooth." Sybok watched her continue to examine the cookies with a lingering look, noticed the nervous action of her hands folding over one another. One thought was to encourage this for his own entertainment; another wanted to nip this in the bud before Spock had to juggle even more in his life. "But, keep in mind," he picked up one of the cookies left, holding it between three fingers, "he might get the wrong idea, looking at the shape."

"Oh." Her eyes widened, stepping back a little. "I didn't—the others are giving Doctor McCoy at least a dozen, and I was thinking Mister Spock deserves some, too, if his department's not giving him any."

"Then I'd let his department take care of it, miss…?" Sybok lowered his hand but didn't put the cookie back. He'd eat this one after he left.

"Chapel." Her smile was a little more confident then. "Christine when I'm not working."

"Christine, then." Sybok performed a shallow bow from the waist up. "I'll leave you the rest of shift. Don't worry about Spock; I'm sure he'll be plenty appreciated tonight."

"Of course." Christine gave him a little nod, too. "Thanks for stopping by with the cookies, Sybok."

  
However, Sybok figured that Valentine's and other related holidays were the last thing on Spock's mind at the moment; the anniversary of Vulcan's destruction fell a few days before the heart-infatuated festivities. When he saw him, Spock wasn't quite melancholy, but he got that look in his eyes that hinted his thoughts of the past preoccupied him more than the present. Something inside tugged at Sybok, that it was still his duty to pull him out of that, but his job pulled his attention away at every opportunity. On the sixteenth of February, he tried to search him out so they could talk and keep their minds off of the issue, but when he dropped by the observation lounge (as the computer had told him Spock would be), he saw that his brother wasn't alone.

Spock sat still and quiet at one of the tables, hands curled around a glass of bubbling Altair water, and McCoy sat across from him with no glass at all. The doctor talked in a low voice Sybok couldn't hear from this distance, leaning forward towards Spock, making gestures and tapping at the table with two fingers. For the short time Sybok watched them, sitting at the corner of the small bar, Spock only nodded to McCoy's words, staring blankly at the center of the table, until McCoy laid his hand flat between them. Then, Spock looked up, unmoving for a few long moments before taking a cautious sip of his water. McCoy smiled, something small, private, subtle, and started talking again.

Sybok wondered if McCoy knew what he was doing, but he trusted him nonetheless, and let them be for the rest of the evening.

\--

Semi-annual poker tournaments brought a sense of levity to the ship that it otherwise didn’t see between dangerous away missions, tense diplomatic talks, or Starfleet bureaucracy. For Sybok, the competitive tournament distracted him from the fact that Spock had become injured (through a variety of methods) nineteen times in the past nine months since the mission had started, only beaten by the captain’s record of twenty-three, which included four stints in sickbay for the same mission.

“They’re both crazy.” McCoy said during one match late in the May tournament, folding his deck of cards in his hand before slapping them down on the table. “Think they’re invincible…pour me another shot, Sybok?” He nudged his shot glass across the table, and Sybok poured him another finger.

Kirk came across the rec room to stand beside McCoy, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Is Bones talking about me again?” To the general chuckles of agreement, Kirk grinned. “Aw, Bones, I’m touched…you want some of my chips? It looks like you’re out.” Sybok and the physicist to his left could be blamed for that.

McCoy batted him away with a hand as he leaned back in his seat. “The only thing I want from you, Jim, is a clean bill of health." He took a sip of his drink. "Goddamn card-counters…”

  
Spock had wanted to play some kal-toh the same night, so when the game was done and his chips were safely stuffed in his pockets, Sybok took the detour off the turbolift to stop by his brother’s cabin. He buzzed once and stepped in through the parted doors. Spock looked up from his desk where the video console was flickering with a recording. “Tonk-peh.”

Sybok nodded and walked over, eyes on the screen. His eyes narrowed, and he took a seat on the other side of the desk so he wouldn’t have to look at it. “Why is our father sending you a message?”

“I requested that he provide me updates regarding the progress of the colony, at least on an annual basis.” Spock focused on the screen again. “He says most of the major infrastructure projects have been completed, and they are concentrating on permanent housing developments now.” He touched a corner of the screen, and the sound of Sarek’s voice stopped.

“How logical. Did he say anything else?” Sybok began taking the chips out of his pockets, stacking them in neat columns on the side of the desk.

“Starfleet continues to offer defensive aid to the colony, and he meets weekly with one of my previous commanders. He also warned that I should be wary of your tactics.”

Sybok scoffed. “My tactics? What does he expect me to do, take your lady-friend?”

Spock leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest, and stared at the monitor. “He may.”

“What?” Sybok’s hand stilled, poised over another column of chips.

“Population management is another concern on the colony. I have been formally asked, twice now, to bond with one of the women who have lost her intended.” Spock glanced up.

“Well,” Sybok felt indignation and mirth rising on behalf of his brother, leaning forward with his hands on the table. “If he is so concerned with the population, shouldn’t he bond with one of them, too? He’s only ninety-three; he has plenty of years left in him!”

“ _ _Sa-kai__ , our father is still a prominent member of the High Council; he cannot marry any individual that simply appears adequate.” Spock sat tense in his chair.

“He could, but he doesn’t want to.”

“I am certain that he does desire to adhere to the same standards, but considering the time since—”

“No, Spock.” Sybok put his hand down on the desk between them, stopping his brother’s defense. “He doesn’t. Can you feel where your bond used to be with T’Pring? It’s worse. I can’t compare how much worse because you couldn’t imagine it anyway. I can guarantee you that he doesn’t want to replace Amanda, ever.” He leaned back in his seat, hand clenching into a fist over his thigh. “He’s finally understanding what it feels like to be severed from someone that close." Then lower, more to himself, "He should give me an apology, but I know I won't get one."

“…apology?”

Sybok gave his brother a flat look. "You don't know?" Spock shook his head, and Sybok sighed. He reached over to grab a column of chips, beginning to distribute it in five columns on the desk between them. "They never told you."

"Apparently not."

"I shouldn't be surprised," Sybok said more to himself, talking over the faint clicks of the chips against each other and the table. "You weren't that old when it happened."

"I believe I was at least fifteen standard years at the time of your exile."

"You were just a kid." Sybok chuckled, continuing to watch the chips fall, and then his smile faded. "They wouldn't have told you they severed me from the clan, or the rest of them, or that they severed me from her."

"…your bondmate?"

"My wife."

A long silence held between them, part disbelief and part confusion; he didn't have to look up to know how Spock's eyes would be flickering back and forth, statements starting and dying before he finally settled on, "You were never married."

"Not publicly, you're correct, but I would have told you about it when it was appropriate." Sybok reached over to grab another column of chips. He stacked them slowly, trying to focus on the curvature of their checkered edges and the density of the column in his hands rather than the memories of T'Leris: witty, beautiful, and understanding.

"Your actions prove to be illogical once again," Spock pointed out. "Why marry before your time if you did not intend to tell our clan?"

"Security. Insurance. You remember what I was researching, those religious books? Sarek could have stopped me as my father, but not if I was independent from him and the clan. I was protecting my work, Spock; I'm sure you would have done the same thing. Maybe you already have."

"I would have sought other alternatives than premature marriage...what are you building?" Spock gestured at the chips.

Sybok blinked and looked down at the towers he had constructed while he talked. The chips had been distributed in a pyramid with a broad base narrowing to a single column; he had one more chip in his hand. "...I don't know."

His hand came forward to knock it all down, spreading plastic across the desk. He dropped the last chip onto the pile. "They shipped me off to Gault so I could recover after what they did. The family I stayed with actually thought I was supposed to recover--isn't that nice? They had blocks. Water colours. Fake coins with little numbers on them."

"Children's toys."

"Children's toys," Sybok agreed with a nod. "First-percentiles in twenty-six subjects, one of the youngest admits to Science Academy, Vesht-Var Nisaya winner and there I was playing with fucking toys!"

Spock began to pick up the pieces, gently stacking them in neat piles as they had been. "Yet you are here." The calm in his voice annoyed Sybok further; that was what they had sounded like as they sentenced him, what the healer had sounded like before he felt fingers on his face, what the doctors had sounded like as they left him on that little farm in the middle of nowhere.

Sybok took a breath, leaning back as he watched Spock's movements. He wouldn't let him take the brunt of his anger. It wasn't his fault. If there had been one innocent party in the whole fiasco, Spock would be it. Young and ignorant. "I am...but you saw--you saw how terrible I was with warp theory. I've recovered most of my mathematics, but I can't know for certain what else I've lost and haven't relearned. And it's not due to any help of theirs, either." Sybok pointed at the console monitor. "If it were completely up to the High Council I'd still be working on my arithmetic, planting some corn."

"You imply that someone else had authority over the case?"

"Not precisely authority, but...involvement." Sybok looked up from the chips to see Spock staring at him, hands paused in their work. "Amanda gave me some help. You already know what a wonderful teacher she is."

"Was." Spock looked down to the table again and resumed stacking.

"Listen," Sybok leaned forward to place his hand on the table, getting Spock's attention again, "why don't you make some spice tea, and I'll grab some coffee cake from the galley? We can set up the kal-toh together, and I won't have ruined your whole evening."

"You have not--"

"You can keep a straight face with me, Spock, but your emotions come through in other ways." Sybok stood from his chair. "Not that it's a bad thing. I'll be back."

"...very well."


	3. June '59 - June '60

For being health-conscious, more than a few people in the medical department had a sweet tooth; thus Sybok made weekly deliveries to their beta shift. He mingled among them with the same easy smile he did with everyone else. Christine in particular drew his attention, and they discussed Spock and Kirk and the stress headaches they occasionally gave McCoy. At first her voice still held that shy fondness for his brother, but the longer Sybok talked to her, the easier his name came and went in conversation. It was from Christine that he learned about McCoy’s birthday in August, and the festivities some of the nurses were planning.

And then he told Spock, who simply said, “I was previously aware of it,” before dashing off with haste to his materials laboratory. Sybok noticed he was doing a lot of that—dashing around—and when he stopped by Spock’s quarters the evening of the party, he was still as fidgety as ever.

Sybok leaned back in his seat, watching as Spock fixed his bangs in the mirror over the dresser, despite the fact they looked exactly the same as they always did and picking at them wouldn’t make them look any better. “It’s just a birthday party,” He reasoned nonchalantly. “There’s no need to be some meticulous. You’re not going to do anything I should know about, are you?”

Spock looked up, narrowing his eyes at the corner of the mirror where he could see Sybok’s reflection. “…no. I am giving him a tumbler.”

“Is that what you’ve been preoccupied with the last two weeks?”

“Yes.” Spock fixed the collar of his command shirt, and then pulled at the front, straightening the fabric over his torso. And then repeating it. And again. Sybok rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.

“Are you done yet?”

Spock didn’t answer immediately, and though Sybok was staring at the ceiling he could hear the rustle of fabric, and finally the step of a boot across carpet. “…we may depart.”

“Finally.” Sybok picked up the package off the table, the shiny silver paper throwing off interesting sparkles of light as he did. “You want to hold this?”

Spock nodded once and took the package from Sybok, and they set off for the party.

  
As a rule, Sybok didn’t want to interrupt Spock’s attempts at…whatever he was trying to do. His brother had to work this out on his own, which included gathering up the courage to acknowledge whatever he felt for McCoy (that Sybok didn't really want to think too hard about, other than watching out for him).

The trappings of the party distracted him anyway. Pleasant emotions filled the air with the loud din of conversation. As he looked out among the crowd he could recognize most of the faces present from all of the departments. For those he didn’t, Sybok wandered into and between their social circles, one pink-sweet drink in his hand. A two-tiered cake sat at the center of the room on a round table, the fudge frosting undisturbed and topped with cherries. The cake had been simple, easy, and fun to make with Isaura and two other of the galleymen, but with the level of chocolate in it…Sybok would keep an eye on his brother, just in case.

Spock looked like he was taking his time with the package, meandering from circle to circle. First, a talk with Nyota, then with his pharmaceutical liaisons he always privately criticized whenever Sybok and he played kal-toh, to and from the increasingly boisterous Scotty and Chekov, and finally to where Kirk and McCoy were joking over a punch bowl. Sybok watched as Spock thrust out the package with both hands, saying something while his gaze didn’t lift up from the obnoxious blue bow stuck to the top. The appearance of the box seemed to capture the attention of both men, McCoy in particular laughing a little as he set aside his drink.

The doctor took the box, pulling it apart, and then peered inside. Spock remained stiff and formal as if he were standing before a review board, hands clasped behind his back. Sybok took a sip of his drink (strawberry? guava?), and swallowed as Spock swallowed, both of them waiting in nervous anticipation.

McCoy smiled, then laughed as he drew the tumbler out of its cushioned packaging, examining the intricate, laser-etched detail into the glass. At the captain’s instance, he then passed it to Kirk, who took it in both hands with an almost childlike curiosity. In the mean time, McCoy clapped a hand on Spock’s shoulder. His next few words, which Sybok couldn’t quite hear over the dull murmur of conversation in the room, had Spock relaxing—no small feat.

Spock looked successful. Sybok took another swig of his drink, smiling into his glass.

\--

September passed without incident, which made October seem ripe for accident, just like it had been last year.

The morning started with an argument at the far table--the command table. The captain and his first officer mulled over mission details between bagels and porridge, but it almost never escalated from pure professionalism. Almost. If Sybok could tell the difference from his table with the other lowly crewmen, so could the whole cafeteria.

"What are you talking about, Spock? It's just a trade conference!"

"Intelligence reports suggest that local unrest may have compromised the security teams assigned--"

"If we go down there with an army, we'll never get to talk to anybody."

"Five men in your security detail is hardly an army, captain."

"It's too much. All I need is you and another guy with a phaser and we'll be fine."

"I insist on at least three more individuals."

"No. One guy. That's it."

"Captain--"

"That's an order, Commander." Kirk stood from his seat, stuffing the rest of his bagel in his mouth, and left the table.

The captain, Spock, and a security guard were gone for seven hours. Sybok baked three pumpkin pies that he almost forgot about when the Klingon and Romulan warbirds pulled into orbit and didn't think about how correct his brother was on most occasions.

  
Kirk and Spock came back. Sybok was still awake when they did, struggling through discrete mathematics applications in his quarters. He walked to the turbolift and out towards the transporter room, but a contingent of nurses were already walking down the hall towards sickbay when he got there. He saw Spock's back, his blue shirt ripped, his hair barely settled, and his arms full of someone that was getting most of the attention from the nurses. Nyota trailed close behind, and Sybok could hear McCoy's voice all the way around the corner.

"Hey," came a voice from his left. Sybok looked over, and one of the transporter attendants was talking to him. "You're in services, right? We got some blood on the transporter pad."

Sybok looked to the pad, seeing the red distortion of light as it shown up through blood, but he looked down at his feet. Little drops of blood trailed out of the room and down the hallway. He sighed. "I'll get to it."

It took longer to find the storage closet and the vacuum then it did to actually clean up the mess. Apparently the device had been rated for "all bodily fluids," which Sybok didn't think too hard about as he pushed the vacuum over the transporter pad, down the steps, and out the hallway.

  
Only thirty-five minutes had passed when he found himself back in the galley again, staring at the pumpkin pies that had been cooling for the latter end of alpha shift's supper hour.

He stared at it a little more, then grabbed a can of whipped cream from the refrigerator unit and added a nice border around the crust, before boxing it up and carrying it out.

Nurses bustled around sickbay again like they had been the last away mission he came in here (though he knew that either of them came back injured more often than not), and they still didn't bother him again. A peek around a few corners and Sybok found Spock sitting in the open office at the end of the room, hands neat in his lap and eyes focused on the chair in a perfect picture of worried restraint.

"You could have used more guards," said Sybok from the doorway. Spock nodded once, not looking up. Sybok stepped in, set the pumpkin pie on the desk next to a few decorative skulls and a padd, and then dragged a chair to sit next to Spock. "Do you want to share the details?"

Spock shook his head. "I must report the incident to Starfleet, and I would--prefer not to repeat it again."

Sybok nodded. Silence lapsed into their conversation before, "How was he injured?"

"One of the delegates took offense to his words and stabbed him in the approximate region of the liver, on the left side." Spock's hands tightened over themselves.

"Oh." For the first time Sybok considered the possibility—as Spock was probably doing now--that Kirk might not come out of that operating room. That Spock might not be just a first officer by the end of the night. If Kirk had been Vulcan, that kind of wound might have killed him. "If something happens, Spock," he said as he stood up, "talk to me, regardless of the time. And you're welcome to eat that pie while you're waiting."

"Noted."

Sybok looked down at his brother, searching for something more meaningful to say. His hand rested on Spock's shoulder and squeezed gently. “…don’t—”

Then the console on McCoy’s desk buzzed, and Nyota’s voice filtered through, “Acting Captain Spock—respond!”

Spock bolted up from his chair to reach over and touch the console, answering the call. Nyota’s face appeared on the screen, one hand at her ear piece and the other off-screen. “This is Spock.”

“Spock, the Romulans and Klingons have started firing on each other.”

"Take evasive action—" Then, Sybok saw his brother hesitate, barely a flicker in his eyes, "—but ensure that the Klingon ship is not destroyed."

Nyota nodded once. "Understood." The screen went blank, and Spock began walking out quickly. Not that Sybok was going to leave him alone yet.

"Spock?" he called out, jogging up to his brother's side before matching his pace. "If the Klingons and the Romulans want to kill each other, why not--?"

Spock stopped dead in the middle of the hallway outside sickbay, and turned to look at him in the eye. "This is not my decision," he said in a low, dark tone. "I have my orders from Starfleet."

"And does Starfleet want to start a war by siding themselves against one enemy by helping the other? Logically, to avoid a war and a loss of life, you have to--"

"You are not in a position to argue diplomatic strategies, crewman," Spock interrupted him. They stood across from each other, jaws set in their silence and shoulders tense, until Spock looked away. "Neither am I, though I must carry them out. Return to your quarters." Then Spock turned on his heel and walked to the turbolift. The doors hissed shut.

Sybok thought about returning to his quarters after that, but once the ship jerked with a torpedo hit, he took the nearest turbolift down to engineering. Every Starfleet officer and crewman had combat training, and his own had been geared towards loading torpedoes or fixing blown control boards. Sybok had a feeling there would be both.

  
Several days later, after he managed to calm his nerves and sleep a full night after several rounds of repairs, Sybok woke to a message blinking at him from the console in his quarters.

From: james.t.kirk  
To: sybok

Thanks for the pie. It tasted great.

-JTK  
\--

"After this, we're all going to have shore leave," Kirk decreed right before the final poker game of the following November's tournament, rearranging his multi-colored chips.

"That is a random statement, captain," Spock said, not looking up from shuffling the cards in his dealer position. Sybok could see that his brother wasn't providing this service out of any great love for the game. He guessed that Kirk had just asked him one too many times, and the only logical solution was to capitulate for the championship.

"It's not random," Kirk argued, already grinning with high spirits. "It's going to be a nice place with things to sell, so whoever wins this can buy themselves a prize."

"Do you have a place in mind?" Sybok asked, but from where he was standing over his brother's shoulder; he decided to sit out the championship this round, but he'd still partake in the entertainment.

"Not exactly." Kirk leaned back in his seat, stretching out his arms before folding them behind his head. "But I'll find something."

  
Something turned out to be the Deneva Prime, a thriving, nine-hundred-thousand strong human colony settled along a popular trade route to the outer boundaries and rich from its asteroid mining business. Everyone was looking forward to their first real shore leave since the beginning of the mission. Not only was the break a chance to get off the ship and inhale some fresh air (which Sybok realized he missed more than he anticipated), but the galley also had an opportunity to put in a request for some fresh ingredients. Sybok worked with Isaura for several days detailing everything they wanted: sugar, fruit, flour, meat, some wine—for cooking, of course.

Starfleet reserved an entire hotel for the crew of the _Enterprise_ situated right outside the bustling heart of the capital city. After beaming down into the lobby, Sybok dropped off his bags in his shared room and changed his uniform top for a plain green shirt before taking a long walk amongst its streets, soaking up the sunshine and the residual emotions of the crowd around him. He walked without awareness of rank and felt refreshed from the indifference of the crowd.

Then his Starfleet communicator buzzed from his belt, and he pulled off the sidewalk to sit at the base of a large circular fountain, the shadow of its fishy centerpiece looming over him. "This is Sybok."

"This is Spock," Spock's voice sounded soft. "What is your current location?"

Sybok looked up for the nearest street sign. "Cochrane and Second, why? Where are you?"

"I believe I am at Second and Keller." Spock's voice got even softer at the last word. "Would it be possible for y—"

"Of course. I'll be there." Sybok snapped the communicator shut, hooked it back onto his belt and set off for the street corner. With some asking around and a sheepish smile, he got the crossroads easily enough, and arrived at a two-tiered, glass-front café adjacent to an antique shop. The crowd looked denser around the café, young people peering through the windows and crowding into the doors, so, looking for the path of least resistance, Sybok slipped into the antique shop.

The layout of the shop wasn't surprising: shelves lined the walls with small, old items, while large pieces were placed haphazardly along the shop floor, making an interesting labyrinth to navigate around. Sybok gave a friendly nod to an older gentleman sitting behind a counter reading a padd with a cup of coffee, and then looked around.

"Hey," Sybok heard Kirk's voice over from his left, behind a large brown box with several small dials and a line with numbers. "Sybok. Over here."

Sybok quirked an eyebrow, and stepped over to peer over the box. Kirk and Spock looked up at him, sitting side-by-side against the back panel of the box. Both of them still wore their gold and blue command shirts respectively. "Hiding?"

"We are waiting for the crowd to disperse from the neighboring business," Spock explained calmly. His legs were crossed and his hands were folded together in a traditional meditation posture; Sybok wondered what had been so stressful. Sybok walked around the box to sit on the floor by Spock's side.

Kirk sat a more casually, legs stretched out in front of him and hands on his thighs. "I just wanted a cup of non-replicated coffee. He wanted a piece of cake—"

"Cheesecake."

"—whatever, and then he has to meet his ex-girlfriend in line—"

"You were propositioning the cashier."

"I was complimenting her on her hair; you don't usually see natural redheads like that anymore. Anyways, he gets his ex upset—Leila, was that her name?" Spock didn't answer. "Then Leila starts screaming about 'Spock this' and 'Spock that' and 'I thought we had something, Spock'," Kirk's feminine voice was laughable, "and next thing you know half of Deneva knows we're in town."

"I recall hearing ten different requests to bear your children, Jim." Spock hadn't moved from his meditative position.

"I'm not letting teen girls bear any of my children," Kirk retorted, and he peered around the box to get a look at the crowd through the window, sighed, and sat back against the box again. "My coffee is sitting in there, lonely as hell…"

Sybok chuckled. "So then what do you want me to do, gentlemen? I'm not popular enough to draw them away with my incredible smile."

"I just called Bones," Kirk said, tapping the communicator at his belt. "The two of you can hold them back while we escape from the masses."

"Escape to where?" Sybok asked.

"The hotel," Spock answered, "until the crowd is less concerned with our presence."

"No." Kirk emphasized the word with a gesture of his hand. "Then we won't be able to go anywhere at all because then everyone will know we're here. I'm getting some supplies first so I don't have to stare at the wall the entire leave."

"Jim," Spock began patiently, "if we could exchange our uniforms for civilian clothing, as my brother has adopted, we could move less conspicuously during the daylight hours."

Kirk gave Spock a long look. "All right. But I want coffee first."

Spock was about to say something when the front door chimed again, and Sybok looked over the top of the box for both of them. "McCoy," he called out as he stood, grinning. "Glad you could join us."

"What the hell is going on here?" McCoy asked, walking over. His eyebrows rose in surprise as he saw the other two men on the floor. "Why are you all on the floor? Shouldn't you be signing autographs out there?" His face broke into a grin, even as Kirk glared at him as he stood.

"I wasn't joking, Bones," Kirk sulked, glancing over McCoy's shoulder towards the window again. "They're a mob." For a moment, Sybok thought he saw a flash of uncertainty and discomfort on Kirk's face. Maybe he felt it instead.

"And what? You want me to bait them?" McCoy asked, folding his arms over his chest.

"I don't know, maybe," Kirk turned in place, looking at the shelf behind their circle. It was filled side to side with actual bound books, spines creased and pages yellow. "Probably should buy something to thank the guy for using his shop…what are you doing over there, Spock?"

Spock had wandered away from them to check the jewelry in the glass cases at the counter, pointing at various pieces that the storekeeper took out for his perusal. "I have found a bracelet that Nyota may enjoy."

"Oh really?" McCoy walked over to join Spock, looking down at the jewelry out on display. Sybok couldn't see what they were focused on, but he did hear McCoy's "Yeah, she'll like that," as he turned towards the bookshelf.

"Fond of the classics, Jim?" he said conversationally, glancing over the titles. He had heard of enough of them, especially the Shakespeare copies, but he had always preferred getting his hands on old Vulcan literature instead. At least, what copies he could still uncover. They had been under lock and key-code at the Science Academy, and now his pickings were limited to Starfleet-shared books about scientific struggles and emotional turmoil. No warlords, no concubines, no grand wars of love and honour.

"Yeah." Kirk settled his gaze along the top shelf. "Nothing compares to feeling some paper, you know?" He reached up to grapple for The Three Musketeers, but it was eluding him, so Sybok reached up on his toes and plucked it from the shelf. "Thanks," Kirk said, smiling at him, and then turned all his attention back to the book. He flipped through a couple of pages, checked the inside covers, before saying to himself, "Yeah, I think I'll buy this."

"Jim?" Spock called from the counter, looking over at them both. "Have you selected an item?"

Kirk waved the book in the direction of Spock and McCoy before walking over to join them. Sybok followed, looking at the pieces of (real wooden) furniture he walked by, and then at the pieces of the jewelry in and on the counter. He caught a glimpse of a braided gold bracelet before it was covered by tissue and sealed in a small box. Beneath the counter, Sybok saw a silver hair brooch set with an emerald, and he was struck by the resemblance it had to something he had given to T'Leris once to hold her long braid in place.

"You know," the old man was saying to them as he dealt with Kirk's purchase, "there's a service alley out back. You're welcome to use it."

"Really?" Kirk blinked at the shopkeeper, then looked to either side to the rest of them, and then back at the shopkeeper with a grin. "Great, thanks."

  
The rest of the shore leave was more relaxing. Spock gave Nyota the bracelet as an early Christmas present and (reportedly) she enjoyed it. Supposedly Kirk had another run in with the crowds but was steered out of harm's way (and into a hospital) by McCoy. Sybok, in his own free time, bought a few new clothes that weren't emblazoned with the Starfleet symbol, had a few quiet drinks in a questionably-reputable bar, and went for long walks at night amongst concrete, glass, and steel.

Yet the walks weren't as satisfying as they once were. He wanted the murmur of the crowd, the hum of electronics and warp cores. Now that he had tasted real and steady work his need for idleness waned, and the emptiness right at the back of his mind felt shallower and more distant than before. Maybe it was the lack of the chase. When he wandered cityscapes before, he was always running from something: his father in Shi'Kahr and Vulcana Regar, ignorant doctors on Gault, or his own half-formed memories that lingered right over his shoulder. This time, he was continuously walking back to something—his hotel room, the _Enterprise_. His brother.

The only exception to their comfort was on the last day as everyone was still settling back into their old quarters. He heard, second and third hand from engineering gossips, that an unidentified craft was barreling towards Deneva on a reckless collision course—but Starfleet wouldn't take chances with it, not after the destruction of Vulcan. The _Enterprise_ was ordered to destroy it, and they did, reducing it to rubble just outside the reach of Deneva's moon.

Kirk hadn't enjoyed the decision, Sybok heard directly from Spock, and when he passed by the lounge to clean up a spilled drink the next evening, he saw the captain stretched out in the corner with _The Three Musketeers_.

\--

The shore leave barely afforded the galley a week to prepare for Christmas and New Year, but it was less hectic now that Sybok knew what to expect and how to prepare for it. Yet he still found himself working all day on making that perfect Christmas cake with the white frosting and the red lettering, asking Isaura what exactly a holly leaf looked like before beginning on the green-red border around the sides. By the time the party rolled around, he just wanted to sit down. The opportunity was there—people were occupied, the food was out, Spock had one arm slung around Nyota by the window, and Kirk and McCoy were laughing with a large group (with Kirk curling one hand over McCoy's shoulder)—so now all he needed to do was find a seat.

"Christine!" Sybok found an empty seat over by the nurses, and took it before anyone could, smiling at Christine and the other nurses. "Ladies. Enjoying yourselves? I'm assuming you all sampled the fudge…"

Every so often through the light conversation (who knew vaccine research could be so intriguing?) Sybok could see Christine glancing over to wherever Spock socialized, until he finally tried to capture her attention completely. The music was loud. Couples swarmed to the center of the room where all the tables had been pushed out.

"Want to dance?" he asked her, smiling, eyes bright.

"Dance?" she repeated, blinking at him. "I—um—" Sybok stood, holding a hand out to her, and she blinked at him again. "…okay," and then she smiled back at him, and took his hand. He could feel the uncertainty of her thoughts through their contact, so he let his own calm slide between them. It was his party, and he'd do what he could to make everyone feel at ease.

"Just one," Sybok assured her as they stepped out between the others, and he circled his free hand around her waist. Her back was to Spock and Nyota, who were pressing closer than most of the other couples in the room. "Unless you want another."

"We'll see," she laughed softly and took the lead in the dance, which had Sybok laughing, too.

They ended up dancing through more than a couple of songs, laughing about one of the new syndicated romance novels (Three Moons and a Sun), which was absolutely ridiculous, before saying good-night to each other after several good drinks.

\--

2259 turned into 2260 and the crew celebrated it like it was the beginning of an Age.

It took most of them two days to fully recover, most of them afforded the luxury of just laying around and doing nothing. Sybok wasn’t, and as he cleaned, he considered the next personal holiday that loomed near: Spock's thirtieth birthday.

Sybok didn't know exactly what kind of importance humans put on turning thirty. Personally, the year hadn't passed with any great fanfare: Sybok had been seven years out of Vulcan and seven years into his recovery, five years away from Gault and overwhelming scent of over-ripe apricots, and twenty-feet underground with a drill in his hand and dust on his goggles. His hands hadn't been as callused since, even during the short stint of employment on Mars.

At least Spock would have a better thirtieth birthday by default—but did Spock realize his fortune that came from his rank, opportunities, and relationships? It was difficult to tell, but at least he seemed entertained on the evening of the sixth. The old lyre sat on Spock's knee reflecting the light of the rec room on its wooden finish, and Nyota sat right next to him, singing along.

"Wonder how long he's been playing that," McCoy wondered aloud beside him, mingling at the back of the room while everyone else towards the front stared quietly.

"Twenty-five years," Sybok told him, glancing at him and then back to the performance. He remembered Spock’s first lessons: tiny Spock with a tiny lyre and stuffy old tutor that came to the house. Their father would request a performance every week, and Sybok would excuse himself to the patio and beyond for years until Spock could actually play something nice.

"Twenty-five?" McCoy arched an eyebrow, incredulous, and then snorted with a small smile. "Shouldn't be surprised—all you Vulcans probably have everything settled by five, don't you?"

Sybok's smile was tight. He kept the joy of the moment over the anger of the past, and it was easier now than it had been before. "Well, they try." And yet, by some chance, it seemed both he and his brother had broken out of their prescribed mold. His smile softened at that.

\--

Valentine's loomed on the horizon as February approached. He filled his schedule with maintenance calls away from the galley and walked from deck to deck with a long checklist pulled up on the PADD under his arm. The sheer amount of replicator malfunctions on this ship was…amazing. So was the crowd of people that were all moving through this corridor at once—presumably to get to the cafeteria—but after nearly two years on the _Enterprise_ , Sybok could at least maneuver around the people-clusters of two and three, ignoring the sound of conversation that pressed in on him from all sides, until something blocked his path.

"Sybok," Nyota stopped right in front of him, her hand almost touching his shoulder before it dropped down to her side. "Can we talk?"

"Here?" Sybok glanced sideways at the people passing them on either side.

Nyota smiled. "No, around nineteen hundred, after dinner—the rec room on deck two?"

"Fine with me." Sybok mirrored her smile. As she walked by him back into the crowd, he wondered if that had actually been a question.

  
He had planned to bake an apple pie that afternoon, and so with this he baked another. When it had cooled a little, he took two generous slices and stored them with a pack of utensils. They hid on the top shelf of the refrigeration unit until he was done with his dinner proper, and then he took them out and tucked them under his arm for transport.

Sybok walked past a few people on the way to the rec room; throughout the day he heard his co-workers talking about a film screening on deck seven, something about an epic Andorian romance in the midst of war (when would it ever be during peace?). Normally, he'd join the festivities…but he'd never forgo a quiet evening with a nice, intelligent woman (even if she was off-limits).

Nyota sat on the corner couch where window met wall, one among only two or three other groups. Sybok could see the beautiful curve of her neck and the hand beneath her chin, elbow propped up on the back of the couch…

Off-limits, yes. Sybok didn't need to remind himself. "Miss," he said as he walked over, and bowed his head in her direction. "I hope you don't mind the treat." He set the transparent containers on the small table at the side of the couch.

"Sybok." she offered him another warm smile like earlier as he sat down, "Did you make that?"

"I did, but you don't have to eat it now." He leaned back against the couch with a sigh, relaxing for the first time since the end of shift. "How may I help you?"

"I wanted to talk to you about Spock."

"Yes?" Sybok shifted in his seat to face her. "What did he do now?"

"Do? It’s nothing like that. I've just been watching him as we've been together and—I don't think I can give him everything he needs."

"What do you mean?"

"When he's with Jim, or Leo—he's…happy."

"He might be, but he's happy with you," Sybok tried to assure her.

"I know, but I think he needs that challenge. He looks so…exhilarated after he talks with Leo, or he plays chess with Jim. I don't want to hold him back." Nyota frowned a little, and she looked at her hands in her lap instead of at him.

"Nyota," Sybok said as he leaned forward, reaching out to gently touch his fingertips to her knee, "whatever Spock might do with Jim or McCoy, remember that he still comes back to you. He needs someone to push him, but he also needs someone he doesn't have to fight against. I'm certain he's grateful for it, and, to be honest, I am, too." He offered her a smile. "He needs rest, even when he says he doesn't."

Nyota laughed. "You have no idea."

"I think I might have some." While memories of Spock's early childhood were as hazy now as memories of his own, he remembered finding Spock asleep amongst toys and work, trying to persevere through nap time (or bedtime) only to fall asleep over whatever he had been working on. Sybok had tucked him in nearly as often as Amanda had, putting away Spock's toys before sneaking off to bed himself. "So don’t be worried about whether you give him enough—I’d be more worried about getting enough from him."

“All right, I can do that.” She paused before venturing, "Can I ask you about something personal?"

"Anything."

"We meld together…frequently," she added the last part after a second thought. "Is this normal for Vulcans? I know it's a private question, you don't have to answer, but I'd like to know."

Sybok laughed. The idea wasn't even surprising; he had seen Spock's affinity for the technique before (on their pet sehlat, Amanda, the vines in the garden…), and that it would spill into his personal relationships seemed inevitable. "First, let's talk about what a meld is supposed to be used for." Never mind that Sybok used his own capabilities as needed and fully acknowledged the fact—to himself.

Spock might not appreciate him telling Nyota all about marriage melds and intimacy (platonic or otherwise) associated with joining the minds of two beings together. However, Sybok decided that if Spock didn't want Nyota to know, he wouldn't have been melding with her for all this time. The fact that he did hinted at future plans, but Sybok wouldn't push either of them.  
\--

March passed without incident. Spock's predictable melancholy was barely noticeable, and this time Kirk joined McCoy in distraction ploys, this time involving chess and a wrestle followed by a drink. April started out uncertain—he glimpsed Nyota talking to Spock in one corridor and looking stern—but by the time her birthday rolled along (and Spock asked him for a berry fruit tart, pouting and all), Spock and Nyota looked as close as ever, and Sybok saw them walking for the arboretum hand-in-hand. Sweet.

As May came around, so did the semi-annual poker tournament. Sybok swung by sickbay after alpha shift to make sure McCoy wasn't going to resign his seat at the table (or forget his luxury bourbon under his desk, because Sybok knew he replenished his supplies at Deneva). He lingered in the entranceway, leaning back against one of the biobeds with a small bag standing up against his ankle.

"Hello, Sybok."

He looked over to see Christine and gave her a warm smile, standing straight again. "Evening, Christine. Want to go play some poker with your boss, tonight?" Sybok asked just to be polite, but he expected nothing more for her to roll her eyes, which she did.

"You're all lucky I don't deem that contest a health hazard," Christine told him with her arms crossed over her chest. Sybok kept his eyes on hers, rather than follow the movements of her hands or falling to the wide collar of her dress. "I see what you all push Leonard to, and I'm not going to raise my blood pressure right along with him."

"I suppose we can always count on someone competent in sickbay," Sybok teased, right as McCoy stepped out of his office, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Ready for the slaughter, Doctor?"

McCoy scowled at him. "Don't act so smug. By now I know all of your goddamn tells. Jim's, too…you'll be all right with beta, Christine?" And when she nodded, he walked off for the exit doors.

Sybok looked back at Christine as the doctor stalked off, and gave her a small wink. "He'll be in a better mood by tomorrow…oh, and just for you—" Sybok reached down to pick up the small bag by the handles, and held it out to her. "Happy birthday. Nyota said you liked butterscotch, so I made some cookies to commemorate the occasion."

Christine took the package, eyes widening as she saw the dozen inside, wrapped in groups of three. "They look delicious…but you didn't have to." She looked back up at him.

Sybok grinned. "I wanted to.”

\--

Sometimes, Sybok got the feeling that the missions that came down from Starfleet had ulterior motives. Sure, the S.S. Beagle had crash landed onto a planet in the middle of nowhere, but the middle of nowhere also happened to be within five light years of the Romulan Neutral Zone.

  
It looked like Starfleet wouldn’t let them wander any further from the Empire if the rest of their missions were any indication. Whatever happened to their exploration goals? How were they supposed to get any closer to the center of the galaxy if they couldn’t turn their gaze away from the Romulans?

He asked Spock about this specific mission after the June communiqué, and Spock had only said, “We will exercise the as much caution as necessary to the circumstances.” Sybok interpreted it as Spock felt just as uneasy as he did, especially after the incident at the trade conference.

Yet for all his worry, there were still three years left in their mission. Something could happen in that time, something that could get him closer to where he wanted to go—had promised to go. He had to put his faith on the random element for now.

At least the universe kept things interesting. After a planet-wide sensor survey, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beamed down. They didn’t come up for another day and a half. Nyota told him during dinner about the uncanny resemblance to Rome the civilization had, deranged former Starfleet officers, and strange religious similarities. Sybok didn’t sleep and neither did she, and by strange happenstance, they were both sitting around her console in a late hour of beta shift.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, staring at the analog video feed that was playing on the screen. From what Sybok could tell, it was some sort of televised show showcasing gladiators. This evening, the stars of the show were…Spock and McCoy, dressed in drab grey clothes and armed with a gladius each. Fear clenched around his heart as the announcer shouted out something along the lines of ‘to the death.’

“I don’t think Spock will kill him,” he muttered, as some of the other bridge crew on duty got up from their consoles to watch as well. Then two other men leapt out from behind a curtain, armed with axes and bronze helmets. “…wonderful. Competition.”

  
Everyone involved did manage to survive, get back to the ship, and managed to leave the planet with a path towards civil agreement between two different religious-political sects. On top of that, they found out what happened to the rest of the crew of the Beagle (though assimilation into that kind of culture wasn’t something he envied). Yet the why was still up in the air—their shields had failed from a presumably internal implosion, as they had been surrounded by empty space, according to one of the last survivors on the planet.

With nothing left to do but let that culture be, they took off into space and let planet 892-IV disappear in their warp trail.

Still, something about the mission nagged at Sybok's more fraternal instincts, and he caught up with Spock right after his post-mission check-up. He gave Christine a small wave from across sickbay before intercepting Spock, who walked quickly from one of the adjacent rooms. "Spock," he had to jog again, why did Spock always walk so fast? "I saw your fight down on the planet."

Spock, predictably tired and irritable, gave him a flat look. "Yes?"

"It was horrible."

Blink. "Excuse me?"

Sybok continued to follow him into the turbolift. "You heard me. I saw the techniques you were trying to use against those barbarians. Don't they teach you any combat skills in Starfleet?"

A slight crease formed between Spock's brows. "I took several combat classes as a cadet.”

"When, ten years ago?" Sybok stepped in front of Spock before he could escape into the turbolift. "Let me show you some Vulcan styles later."

"Why?" Spock reached out to push the call button next to the lift doors.

"So you can put up an appreciable fight, and," Sybok took another step, blocking Spock's path while looking him dead in the eyes, "you can spend the night on a place like that without worrying me, or Nyota."

Spock's shoulders slumped, and he looked away. "Very well. We may schedule a session tomorrow."

Sybok smiled, and then he stepped aside to let Spock walk into the turbolift. "Give yourself some time to rest. We can do it the day after."


	4. June '60 - July '61

Since Starfleet wasn't technically organized to conquer planets and Spock was technically a science officer (and not security), Sybok had low expectations for his combat capabilities. This wasn't to say that Sybok held himself as a master of Vulcan martial arts, but he knew enough to survive this long and to know what Spock was doing wrong. He had spent more than a few summers in Xen’Tal at the Institute of Defensive Arts, the one thing Sarek and he agreed he should do with his free time—he couldn’t subert authority all the time.

"You're too tense," he said to Spck at the first practice, after they had both loosened up with some traditional Vulcan stretches. "We both know how momentum works—so why are you trying to take all of that power out of your hits? Now, come on, try to attack me. Don't give me that face, Spock. Attack me!"

Spock came at him with an obvious punch for the face (couldn’t he be less obvious?). Sybok caught Spock's fist in his hand, deflected the second blow that came for his face again, and then shoved his brother back into the mat. “That was pathetic,” Sybok said.

"You are naturally endowed with greater strength than me," Spock noted (grumbled) as he pushed himself back to his feet, straightening his black undershirt.

"So?" Sybok stepped to the side, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. He wouldn't deny a smug pleasure that, after all they had been through apart, he could still outmuscle his younger brother. "I'm not the strongest humanoid you'll face in the universe, and I have enough mind to be benevolent. Try again."

The practice like that for another forty minutes, each direct offensive from Spock becoming harder to deflect. Gradually, Spock began to incorporate more of his limbs in smoother and more powerful strikes, until he came in with two hands at once. The sweep of his arms came in for Sybok's ribs, and when Sybok had no other choice but to stop him dead at the forearm, he missed the knee coming around and driving into his side. He felt it instead, along with the impact of the cushioned mat into his shoulder.

The next thing he heard was the thump of Spock falling next to him; apparently the move wasn't as smooth as he thought. Sybok laughed as he pushed himself to sit up, one hand idly rubbing at his side through his own black undershirt. A little close to old wounds, but..."That was good," he commended as Spock rolled to sit up, too. The tumble managed to mess up his hair, if only a few strands out of place. Sybok reached out to ruffle it further with his hand, and narrowly avoided another hit to his arm as he stood up. "Let's try again, and forget about your dignity for now. Do you think I care if you don't look perfect?"

"I am not perfect," Spock argued, rising to stand as well. His hand rose half-way, reaching for his hair, and then curled into a fist in mid-air.

"Exactly." Sybok grinned and spread his arms wide. "So stop trying to be and show me your best."

  
For the sake of their social schedule (and Sybok's own fitness, his little brother being faster than he anticipated), they only met once a week in the gymnasium, usually on Mondays or Tuesdays. He'd come in, see Spock come out of the pool, question why Spock ever want to be immersed in water for an extended period of time, and then they'd find an empty room with a mat and continue where they left off. Spock learned as fast as Sybok expected, remembering moves after a demonstration and two trials, and he was creative enough to begin blending them in ways not strictly adhering to any one style.

Sometimes, they saw Kirk and the pilot, Sulu, sparring in another room. "What about a little spar, Spock? Really quick, come on," Kirk would implore, and Spock would dismiss it under the illogic of "needless violence."

Spock's rejection was probably better for Kirk in the long run. Sybok could tell his brother was getting faster, stronger, unlocking the restraints he put on his strength. His struck with fluid, continuous movements, and if Sybok hadn't been the one to teach (or refresh) those techniques, he might be out of commission for a while. But it only helped so much.

They practiced through July ("We've been at this for three weeks." "Yes, and the consequences of your age are showing, __sa-kai__.") and into the beginning of August, settling into a steady schedule of training, fighting, and learning.

Then one session Spock's leg came up in a spin kick and hit Sybok’s ribs harder than they had been hit in…several years. Sybok could remember the date if the pain wasn't distracting him along with the detrimental effects of gravity.

" _ _sa-kai__?" Sybok heard as he took in several tight, short breaths, hand clutching at his ribs. He managed to roll onto his back, blinking up at the white lights overhead and Spock's face etched with concern. "Are you injured?".

"Maybe," Sybok wheezed back, digging his fingers into his ribs to feel for any breaks. He squeezed his eyes shut through the pain, but the bones still felt as strong as they usually did. "Probably just a bruise. I'm fine."

Spock held out a hand for Sybok, who took it and pulled himself to his feet with another tight, stuttered breath. "You should report to sickbay," Spock told him in a low tone, the concern filtering through his voice and his touch.

With a small smile, Sybok shook their grip loose in case anything from his mind began to filter back, and patted Spock on the shoulder twice. "I'll do that...why don't you go find Jim? You can finish up your workout on him." Spock opened his mouth to say something, but Sybok waved it off and walked out before he could protest.

Sybok's hand didn't drop from his side as he walked to sickbay, passing a few people in the hallways. When he arrived at Sickbay, he met the usual people of beta shift, including Christine, who set aside some hypos and measuring equipment to meet him at the entranceway. She looked over with a smile, but then saw his hand and rushed over. "Sybok, what happened?" She looked between his face and his hand still over his ribs, expression caught in confusion and concern.

"Spock and I were training." Sybok let her guide him to one of the biobeds, sitting down and then laying back with a sharp breath. "He's—improving." He managed to force out, though the discomfort didn't come entirely from the ache. The ceiling was white, the light was bright in his eyes, and the bed was firm. Everything smelled so clean and the air felt cold and still. Just like the chamber where they made him wait, just like the hospital room after they were done pulling his mind apart—

Sybok closed his eyes and reminded himself where he was and wasn't. "Well, I'll say," Christine was saying, her boots clicking on the ground all the way around the biobed. "I'll take a scan to make sure he didn't break anything."

"He didn't." Something rolled over the floor and stopped at his injured side, followed by a low hum. He cracked open an eye to see a white panel hovering over his ribs. "What—"

"It's just the scanner." She touched him at the shoulder, and then began tapping at the controls on the panel. He felt a dull heat at his ribs that passed after a minute, and then she pulled the panel back to the side against the wall. "Well, you're right: nothing's broken, but these lower ribs are bruised."

Sybok tried to crane his head up to see what she was looking at on the back panel, but the muscle in his side pulled, so he relaxed again. It wasn't worth it. "What's the treatment?"

"We can put a regenerator on it for a few hours, and your body can take care of the rest tomorrow." Christine searched for something in one of the wall cabinets. "Do you want some painkillers?"

"No, I'll be fine." Sybok closed his eyes again. Pain control came slower than it should have—it had been a while—but with each slow breath the pain dulled more and more until it was a faint twinge in his thoughts.

The minutes ticked by in his pseudo-meditation with nothing but the distant conversations of the nurses and the warm hum of the regenerator to break the silence. Sybok analyzed warp theory to keep the boredom at bay, but the gaps in his memory and his reeducation left him frustrated. He moved on to a listless review of art history, thinking about glass beads and tapestries woven out of seaweed—

"Commander Spock to Sickbay." Spock's voice filtered through from one of the desk consoles. All conversation from that side of the room stopped. "Requesting medical assistance at Doctor McCoy's cabin, Deck Three. Report immediately."

Sybok lifted his head in time to see Christine rush out the pocket doors with a white case in hand and another nurse trailing behind her, and then he stared up at the ceiling again. Did he want to go? He checked—his ribs still hurt. He wasn't a doctor, either, but Spock was involved.

After exhaling a breath, Sybok pushed the regenerator away, sat up, and walked out of sickbay while ignoring the questions of three nurses along the way. As long as he didn't breathe to deep or step too hard, his ribs were fine, and he kept that in mind all the way down the hallway and into the turbolift.

Emerging onto deck three, Sybok heard raised voices and heavy footsteps from around the corner. He quickened his pace out to the rounded hallway, turned towards the noise, and nearly got bulldozed by a shirtless Kirk (armed with a phaser), Spock in his exercise clothes (also armed), and four security guards.

Ignoring the new bruise likely forming at his shoulder, Sybok took after them. Kirk flung his arm back behind him as he ran, and his random shot took out one of the security guards. Another shot try took out a second.

"Take the other hallways!" Spock shouted as they came to a four-way junction of the corridors, and the remaining two guards peeled off in opposite directions while Kirk and Spock ran straight ahead. Sybok followed his brother, and but as Spock stopped dead in his run Sybok did, too, grabbing at the wall to take some of his momentum out. He watched as Spock raised the phaser in his hand, took aim, and fired.

Kirk splayed across the polished black floor in a heap of limbs and disappearing momentum, traveling a few yards more until he was flat on his stomach, stunned. Spock lowered the phaser before rushing forward to kneel by Kirk's side. Sybok followed. "What's wrong with him?"

"He began to act strangely after the conclusion of our first spar," Spock said as he turned Kirk over on his back, beginning to check his pulse. "At first I believed it might be a seizure—"

"But?"

"But it stopped abruptly, and I follow him to Leonard's cabin."

"And what happened there?"

Spock gave him a long look, then turned his attention back to Kirk and began picking him up. "Jim must be moved to si—" Spock's muscles seized all at once and he dropped back to his knees, Kirk's body falling back to the floor.

Sybok lurched forward. "Spock?" He reached out for Spock's shoulder, and the moment his fingers touched Spock's hand came back, slapping his arm away. Another bruise for the evening. Spock got to his feet, shoved Sybok away, and marched for the turbolift. Sybok caught him at the shoulder again—he was tired of being shoved around—and dragged him back into the curved wall of the hallway. "Spock, what's happening—"

"Release me!" Spock shoved at him with both hands, enough to dislodge his grip on Spock’s shoulder. He lurched forward towards the end of the hallway but Sybok flung an arm out to catch him again, and they both tumbled off-balance and to the ground. Sybok tightened his grip over Spock’s arm and scrambled to pin him down, all while Spock flailed beneath him.

“Hold still,” Sybok said, panting. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I’ll kill you!”

Sybok stared down at his brother, dumbstruck; not even the flare of new bruises penetrated his thoughts. Spock would never say that; therefore, his mind strained to reason, this wasn’t Spock. His hand rose to press his fingers against the side of Spock’s face, and his brother’s body jerked at the touch. “Who are you?” Something raged against his own mind like a battering ram. “Answer me!”

“No.” Spock’s body lurched again, but didn’t dislodge Sybok’s hold.

He didn’t want to do it—but he had to. Whatever this was had probably come from Kirk and if it could move seamlessly from body to body, then the whole ship was in danger, but no one on the ship could be more dangerous than Spock with his knowledge, his strength, and his skills.

Sybok’s fingers pressed harder over Spock’s face, and his mind pushed forward. The presence from before pushed in on him from all sides with deafening, roiling thoughts. Spock was still here, but this thing was suffocating, and Sybok knew intuitively that Spock would lose this battle, or worse, injure himself trying to fight against it. He wasn't taught how to deal with this kind of psionic invader.

But Sybok was. He had the ancient tools used for this sort of warfare, but he hadn't used it in so many years, and never against his own family; he had told Spock that much. Yet he wasn't going to harm Spock, he wouldn't mean it—he would try to free Spock from this demon. How else would they separate them and leave Spock intact?

So Sybok focused his mind and blocked out his senses one by one before unleashing his first assault. He heard a distant scream through the roar of the invader, but the contact and the meld remained steady. Another assault came sharper than the last, aiming for the footholds the invader had in his brother's mind. Another, another; he didn't keep track of how many attacks he unleashed until finally Spock's thoughts felt homogenous, albeit quiet.

Sybok's senses came back one by one, including sight: Spock stared up at him with wide, unblinking eyes, focused somewhere beyond his face. He pulled back his fingers and then moved off Spock.

When Spock sit up as well, he pulled Spock up against his chest and held him tight with one hand cupped at the back of his head, the surest way share soothing thoughts. "You can come out, Spock. It's gone," he whispered.

After a long, long minute Spock stiffened up and then relaxed again. His hands curled into fists in his lap. "…I could have defeated it."

Sybok breathed a short laugh. "I doubt it."

"That does not change the possibility that I could have. It may have resulted in less pain."

"If you're really in pain, Spock, you can transfer some of it to me."

Spock said nothing. His fist came up as if to punch Sybok in the shoulder, but slowed at the last second until it was only a grudging tap with his knuckles. Sybok snorted. He could hear the nurses coming from around the corner.

  
In the end, McCoy, rubbing his eyes and swearing under his breath, ushered both Kirk and Spock into a private care room, while Chapel confined Sybok back to his biobed with the regenerator humming over his ribs again ("But I have other bruises now, Christine," and she simply shook her head). From his vantage point he saw Nyota enter sickbay in civilian pajamas.

"Where is he?" she asked, and Sybok just waved a hand towards where he had seen them disappear. "Thanks." Nyota disappeared around the corner.

After his mind started wandering towards quantum mechanics and the funny ways of how incorporeal beings could leap from one person to another, McCoy came out and walked to his side. He glanced over the panel of the regenerator. "How does it feel?"

Sybok took a deep breath, testing. "It could be better."

"Anything broken?"

"No."

"Good." McCoy tapped at the panel and the humming died, and he moved it off to the wall with one hand. "From what Spock's told me, I should thank you."

Sybok sat up, rubbing at his ribs. "You don't have to."

"I don't plan to." McCoy crossed his arms over his chest. "You might have taken that thing out of his head, but there's no way for me to tell if you hurt him, and until there is I'm going to say that was a fucking stupid thing to do."

"I wouldn't hurt my own brother, Doctor." Sybok moved to sit at the edge of the bed, still rubbing at his ribs.

"You don't know that. He might act fine now, but what if—"

"I didn't hurt him, and his mind isn't as fragile as you think it is."

"I'll leave that for follow-ups."

"I wouldn't expect anything less from you." Sybok slid off the bed and to his feet. "Am I free to go?"

"You are." McCoy said. Sybok turned to go. "Don't do it again, that kind of mind-thing. But I'm glad you did."

  
What he got from Spock two weeks after the fact was that this had all been a freak accident: they had been following an unidentified energy trail, then an incoporeal being transformed through the hull and electronics of the ship before finally settling on Kirk to be an instrument of its terror. Spock wouldn't say what Kirk had been doing in McCoy's cabin, but Sybok drew independent conclusions from his beta-shift repair circuit.

One of the consoles had suffered during the chase, and just around the corner he could glance the two standing too close for professionals, and Kirk was raising a hand towards McCoy's face, whispering—

Sybok finished his work on the hallway console, ignored any sounds that carried, and then walked off for the kitchen. What better to get his mind off of the day than making a late-night strawberry cheesecake? He'd save a small piece for Spock before he let beta shift take the rest.

\--

Their assignments continued to get stranger: pre-warp civilizations, abandoned alien outposts, xenophobic warp-capable kingdoms—if a planet wasn't barren, it was probably belligerent.

One group that interested Sybok throughout all the interesting events on the _Enterprise_ was the security department. They seemed to suffer the worse of diplomatic pitfalls and unstable geologic activity, and just about every dangerous creature and ethereal being that appeared on the ship itself. Usually, the casualties were only one or two, but when it happened with such regularity, the numbers added up. Every time they stopped at another star base it was the security department that was stocked fresh, and he could tell, three years into the mission, that this was the group that wanted to return to the safety of Earth the most.

They had a unique sort of pain he could feel, almost taste, when he took his cafeteria tray next to their groups. They grieved silently, burying their anger and pain beneath a facade of professionalism. Sybok thought they shouldn’t bury it, not when he could help them dispel it completely.

The youngest ones among them were the hardest hit. Some were barely twenty-four when they saw their friends die in combat, some struck by weapons as simple as sharpened rocks. They practically broiled with resentment, and they tried to take their anger out on the bags and exercise mats, which was where Sybok found them.

While Spock gravitated towards the pool during their off-days, Sybok meandered towards the weights and mats. Some small talk, quiet questions, a bit of a laugh, and then he caught their eyes -- and that was all he needed to see and soothe, letting them leave the gym with a lighter spirit and probably not knowing why.

"What did you do?" Spock asked him afterward in the locker room. His wet hair stuck up everywhere at sharp angles.

"I talked to them," Sybok answered, changing his shirt, though not looking at Spock. He could feel his brother's eyes on him, scrutinizing. They said nothing more as they changed.

Yet as they were walking out, Spock looked at him and said in Vulcan, "I would maintain a professional distance with the security department, _ _sa-kai__."

Sybok glanced back, quirking an eyebrow. "Why?"

"We have received orders to explore the known limits of the Romulan Empire. They may suffer more casualties."

"What's dangerous about exploring something you already know? We're not going to cross the Zone, are we?"

"We may. Preliminary intelligence suggests that their borders may have expanded around the outposts, which could lend itself to a variety of combat situations."

"And you're worried about my emotional state? You believe I can't accept the death of a few comrades?"

"I am not worried; I am questioning your involvement."

Sybok grinned. "Don't worry about it, I know what I'm doing. I also know what ship I'm on, and I hope you do, too." He put his hand on Spock's shoulder and squeezed briefly. "Have a good night." And they parted ways at the turbolift; Spock went up to deck three, and Sybok would catch another to deck twelve.

\--

"It's the holiday season again?" Sybok said as he reviewed the incoming flood of galley requests. December third. Apparently it had taken the entire crew two days to think about what they wanted before submitting their requests all at once. He felt a strange sense of déjà vu, shook it off, and then started pulling up the fudge recipes, planning to make it now, freeze it, and pull it out just in time for the holidays.

This year was better than the previous two, or so it seemed, until he had to decorate that goddamn tree. This time he spread it out over four separate days, and when people asked why it was half-finished, he pointed to the bread-pudding they were piling onto their plates three or four scoops high. By the time everything was set up for the Christmas party, he felt accomplished but tired, so he took a seat on the couch and let the party come to him.

By the end of the night he had received a giant, hollow chocolate of a fat man with a beard from the galleymen ("You all want me to show up drunk, don't you?"), white chocolate truffles from Christine ("You really do care, Christine.”), and then a mysterious black box from Nyota towards the end of the evening when his drink was empty and he was looking more out the window than towards the crowd.

"What's this?" he asked as he took it from her. It was short but heavy with a wood-like finish, latched at the front.

She sat down on the couch next to him. "Open it."

Sybok fiddled with the latch at the front until he could swing the top up, and stared down at its contents. Two lines of oil pastels—approximately twenty-five each, so fifty—stared up at him, unused and untouched. The rounded tips fit perfectly into the molds cut out of the black foam. It was more colour he had seen in any one place for years. "Nyota?" He didn't know where this came from, what would tell her that he needed an art set when Sybok hadn't even known himself.

"It's from both of us," she said, "Spock mentioned that you used to have quite an artistic side, and we thought you might want to bring it out again, at least on things you can keep."

He shut the lid again and took a deep breath, exhaling it in one huff before he looked over to her and smiled. "You don't know how grateful I am for this."

"Maybe you can draw something for us later?"

"Of course." Sybok leaned forward to set the box on the table, so he could turn towards her and give her a tight hug, then smiled, remembering something. "I saw McCoy kissing your hand over there, earlier." he said as he drew back. "Spock's okay with that?"

Nyota nodded once and grinned. "I think so, because if you didn't see—and they probably made sure nobody did—" her voice hushed, "Spock was kissing his hand, too."

His brows rose, and then he simply shook his head with a small chuckle. "I'm not surprised. And as long as you're all happy—and you are, correct? Spock isn't dragging you into something because he's greedy?"

"We've talked about it, but thanks for asking. Oh," she looked past him towards the trio, "I think they're giving him hot cocoa over there, and Spock said he didn't want to stay up all night." Nyota stood and smoothed out her dress. "Merry Christmas, Sybok."

"You too, Nyota."

\--

He wasted no time using those pastels, but after the third or fourth picture he realized he was losing focus on his main goal. Sybok had studied warp theory and mathematics long enough; now it was time to implement all that studying.

"Happy birthday," Sybok said to Spock as he perused the dessert offerings in the cafeteria. The raspberry tart was especially popular this evening. Apparently the crew's sweet tooth had recovered from the new year's celebration for 2261. "Can I ask you for something?"

Spock glanced up at him, and then back down to the trays. "Yes?"

"I want a job with warp core maintenance."

"I am not the chief engineer." Spock reached out to grab a slice of the tart.

"Yes, I know, but—you have access to my personnel records, and that will be the first thing Mister Scott checks when I ask him."

"Indeed."

"But he'll see I don't officially have 'warp theory' or 'advanced warp systems' taken or passed at the Academy."

"You are not stating any new facts about the circumstances."

"Impatient, aren't we?" Sybok grinned when Spock gave him a flat look. "The new fact here is that I have passed the aforementioned classes, and I'd like it appended to my personnel profile by the time Scott looks at it."

"Through what means?"

"My own."

"I doubt you have completed the necessary practical sections of that course."

"I haven't—but those courses are designed for humans, Spock." Sybok moved around the dessert table to stand close by his side. "I've read all the material they have available on the subject, I've watched them take care of the cores, I know what to do in case of an emergency—let me put that to good use. All I need is an opportunity."

Spock gave him a long look, moving over when one hyperactive ensign darted forward towards the tapioca pudding dish. "The maintenance of the warp cores is essential to the health of this vessel. I cannot recommend you to the position based on your opinion or our filial—"

"I'm not asking for a recommendation," Sybok said, and turned to face Spock completely. His voice lowered, and his speech changed into Vulcan, "I need the opportunity, Spock. The recommendation can come from my colleagues, but I can't acquire it if I'm not permitted to work with them."

Spock gripped his tray and turned to face Sybok as well, looking him in the eyes. Sybok could see the conflict in his eyes, the tightening of his jaw—none of this was strictly moral, perhaps his brother was stricter than he anticipated—?

"Allow me three days," Spock said. "Then request the position from Mister Scott." Then he walked away.

Sybok ducked into the galley before too many people could see him grinning silly, but he met Isaura instead, watching a loaf of bread bake in the oven. She looked over to him and tilted her head, "Something happen?" she asked.

"Happen? No." Sybok made his way over to the supply cupboard and took out a round, dark tin with a hole in the middle. "I feel like a Bundt cake, don't you?"

  
In three days time he talked to Scott about joining the warp maintenance crew. Sybok sat in the chief engineer's office watching Scott drinking out of a dented coffee cup while his profile was reviewed. Finally, Scott set the coffee cup down, sat up right in his swivel chair, and looked across the messy desk at Sybok. "Well," Scott tapped at the padd, "It looks like you can, though it's any wonder how you fit these classes in. I'll talk to Keenser and you can start tomorrow in gamma—how's that?"

"That's excellent," Sybok said, though mentally he reviewed his schedule and how to proportion his time. When would he sleep? He rose from his chair. "Permission to be excused, sir."

Scott waved his hand lazily towards the door. "Make more Dundee cake again, all right?"

\--

The first thing he learned on the job was that Keenser didn't appreciate tardiness. Not that he was late, but that was what the two ladies, Protz and Virani, told him as they showed him around the area. They both showed him around the area despite the fact he had wandered around there before, and at the end of the tour Virani left him with Protz to calibrate the cores for optimum output.

"Have you done this before?" she asked as she tapped at the panel. Sybok stood next to her, peering curiously at the screen.

"Not with this system," he answered, honest. He hadn't done it with any system.

"Oh well, the first thing to keep in mind is that there's no real hard-and-fast way to do this." Protz glanced up and then back down. "There's too many variables for the computer to keep track of when we're actually moving, so you kind of have to—watch."

Valves opened and hissed around them, columns on the panel rose from green through orange to red, fluctuating wildly. The actual core hummed louder, grew brighter, and a few survival instincts at the back of his mind suggested he get out of there. Yet he stayed, hand gripped around the railing as Protz turned a knob and pulled down a lever down until it lay parallel with the panel board.

The core returned back to its normal state with a downward groan and fading lights. Sybok's grip on the railing loosened as his own exhilaration came down with it.

"That's all for calibration." Protz smiled and clapped her hands together. "But there are some other things to look out for one the bottom I need to show you, too."

Of the eight hour gamma shift, Sybok counted four hours that were completely dedicated to learning the details of warp core maintenance. Reading all the technical manuals didn't compare to the multi-sense memory of getting his hands on the controls, learning by doing, and remembering every exception to every rule that you had to learn on the job. All he needed to do was remember it, and he had enough confidence in his own mind now to do just that.

\--

Sybok didn't completely forsake his position in the galley. Instead he worked through the beginning of beta to get dinner going before taking the rest of the shift off until gamma, where he continued to shadow for a week or two more (just to be safe) before trusting himself to calibrate and adjust the warp cores without someone checking his work. The ship hadn't blown up yet.

February and March passed without too much incident in either department. Though in April during what was supposed to be a leisurely survey of a pre-warp planet, something began to drain the warp cores, and the department worked the entire shift to solve the problem until it solved itself. They had their captain and landing party back on board within the next hour after that, and Sybok couldn't be bothered asking Spock what exactly had gone down there.

The next morning after he had finished his time in the galley, he returned to his cabin. The next few hours would be a perfect opportunity to sit down with those oil pastels—

The buzzer rang. Sybok let out a sigh and called out, "Come," and the doors opened to reveal Spock standing out in the hallway, hands folded behind his back. Sybok arched an eyebrow and stood. "Evening, Spock," he said, because it was really evening for his brother, more than several hours after the end of alpha shift. "How can I help you?"

Spock stepped into the room, but lingered around the doorway. "I had an inquiry regarding interpersonal relationships."

"Have a seat and ask."

"Thank you." Spock took a seat on the other side of the desk, shifted, folded his hands together, and then looked at Sybok. "Is there any precedent for…unusual partnerships in Vulcan history?"

"Such as?"

"Multiple partners."

"Do you plan on acquiring some concubines?"

"No. The situation is not similar to those circumstances."

"So we're dealing with a real situation then?"

Spock said nothing, and Sybok smiled.

"Fine, we can assume this is 'hypothetical.' There would be a man—a king, historically speaking—coupled with the women he would want to bond with. He would go through his pon farr with all of them, and therefore be bonded to all of them."

"Simultaneously."

"Yes."

"Is there a limit on the amount of extra partners?"

"How many are we hypothetically including?"

"Three."

"Three? One bond is consuming enough and you want—right, hypothetical. I'd assume that they would all have to be present during the Time, regardless of how many there were."

"What if the genders were not homogenous?"

"Male concubines?"

"Hypothetically."

"First, you have to somehow overcome instinct. Males are challengers, you'll be set on killing them…and I know the pastels aren't that interesting, Spock. You have a question?"

Spock stared a moment longer at the pastels before looking up at Sybok. "I was reviewing the possibilities of how you managed your own pon farr without returning to Vulcan. Considering the time that has elapsed, you must have endured at least one occurrence of it since your exile."

"Twice," Sybok corrected and leaned back in his chair. "But I wouldn’t suggest you look at me for how to deal with your own pon farr. I don't restrain my passions like you do, so when it does hit, it's not as uncontrollable as it might be. And no, before you ask, I'm not suggesting that you adopt my philosophies, either. But you should."

"Duly noted." Spock brushed aside the offer, staring at the pastels again. "Then you were able to control it?"

Sybok laughed. "I wouldn't say that. I've got enough sense to pay the monthly salary of a nice, empathic prostitute, but nothing I've tried has stopped me from going through with it."

Spock shifted uncomfortably. "…what about medicinal alternatives?"

"It's not something I've investigated," Sybok admitted. He hadn't exactly been within walking distance of a research hospital, and if he had, they probably would have thrown him out for mentioning a seven year mating cycle. "But when you're going through this—nothing is going to slow you down or impose rationality on your mind. Anything you eat or medicate yourself with will just be metabolized out of your body."

"And after the fever has passed?"

 _You hope they don't call the authorities_ , Sybok thought. He shrugged his shoulders. "You move on with your life and the relationship, if there is one."

Spock nodded once. "Understood."

"Is there anything else you wanted to ask?" Sybok leaned forward to grab an oil pastel from the box, letting the tip hover over the paper of the large sketchpad. The movement drew Spock's gaze.

"Not about this particular subject." Spock's gaze continued to follow the path of the oil pastel as Sybok drew a couple jagged lines vertically across the paper. "Have you acclimated yourself to your new duties?"

"With the warp core?" He drew another jagged line so that the two intersected into a rough triangle. "I think so—enough to know that your captain needs to stop driving it so hard."

"To what purpose?"

"To make my job easier." Sybok laughed. "Pick a colour."

"I cannot make an informed decision if I do not know what you intend to illustrate," Spock said and scooted his chair a little closer.

Sybok smirked. "Mount Seleya—but don't choose orange or yellow."

Spock's brows came together.

\--

After Sybok had finished his piece of Seleya in the dawn and given it to Spock ("Why don't you hang it up? Or give it to Nyota for me?") Sybok wished—prayed—to a far and distant power that Spock was not going to go through his pon farr in the near future. In fact, he followed it with an addendum saying that he never wanted to see Spock in a pon farr at all.

That would just be—well, if the conversation was indicative of anything, it'd be complicated, and Sybok spent enough time as a teenager trying to needle out of Amanda how she dealt with that Time to want to deal with the aftermath.

Besides, more importantly, Christine's birthday was coming up in the next month, and he had something to prepare for that.

  
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Isaura asked him as she held the thermometer out.

Sybok plucked it from her grip and stuck the probe down into the mass of corn syrup and sugar boiling at the bottom of the pan. "Why not?" he asked, and glanced back to the recipe padd. "You said it was tradition, and I don't recall seeing any lollipops in sickbay at all."

  
After the candy had set and each lollipop had been wrapped with a clear plastic and tied off with a blue ribbon, Sybok boxed each flavour individually and then stored them in the cryo for May. When May finally rolled around, he took the boxes out, defrosted them and then tucked them under his arm while he walked down to sickbay.

"Sybok," Christine intercepted him before he could get much farther than the front desk, "what did you bring? We didn't order anything."

"Annual physicals are coming up, correct?" Sybok smiled at her. "I heard that on Earth, to ease the pain and suffering of the procedure, a doctor's office is traditionally stocked with sweets for the good patients." He lifted up one of the boxes to show off the candy-apple green lollipops. "So I made sure you adhered to these customs."

"I don't remember anything that said we had to have lollipops." Christine reached forward to grab one. "This is as big as my hand—do you really think we are going to give these out? It has 'diabetes' written all over it."

"I could have added 'Courtesy of Sickbay' if you wanted." Sybok tapped the wide, flat surface of the candy. "We have a few laser scalpels around here."

"That's not going to make them any better." She tucked it back into the box and placed her hands on her hips. "Leonard already went to the tournament—shouldn't you be over there, too?"

"I decided to forgo this one."

"Why?"

Sybok's smile widened into a grin. "If I'm playing cards with them, I can't have lunch with you."

"Oh." Christine looked away, colour rising to her cheeks, and then looked back at him. "But you haven't asked me to lunch."

"You're right.” He paused, cleared his throat and smoothed over his hair from his forehead. “Would you like to go to lunch?"

Christine smiled. "I'd love to."

  
Sybok saw more of her smile as he walked with her down to the cafeteria together. At first their conversation covered the pains of wrangling the crew together for annual physicals (a source of stress for everyone involved, but the medical department especially), then towards the peculiarities of their recent missions. While mysteriously powerful primitive civilizations entertained Sybok's imagination, they appeared to worry Christine. That's where the birthday cupcake came into play.

"I don't think there's anything to fear with the Tarandi," he said, stirring the corn chowder in his bowl. "If they don't have an interest in our warp capabilities and they're willing to mine the dilithium for equivalent payment, what's the downside? They were using it for necklaces and vases anyway."

Christine picked at the sidewall of the cupcake with her fork. "I'm not sure, but it feels strange. Nyota said that they were expecting us, but how would they, if the Federation had never contacted them before? She said that would violate the Prime Directive so we were both wondering—I wouldn't want to interfere with a developing civilization, if you know what I mean."

"You're not alone with that opinion, but can you imagine what could be learned if we weren't so afraid of interfering? Archaeology for instance: why wait for a civilization to die out when you can study it as it develops?"

"I don't think xeno-archaeology is really suited for those kind of studies."

"Have you done research in that field to know, Christine?"

She glanced up at Sybok, opened her mouth to say something but stopped, and then looked back down at the cupcake. "Well, I—yes, I have. A little."

"Really? When?" Sybok did a few calculations in his head, trying to estimate when this would have happened relative to her age, the time they had served, studying at the Academy, time spent on xenobiology and basic medical techniques—either she was older than he thought or the excursion into that field had been brief.

Or, more attractively, she was intelligent enough to finish her secondary education earlier in her teenage years, which left more time open in her twenties.

"Undergraduate studies—I actually wanted to major in it, xeno-archaeology." A small smile touched her lips, and Christine picked at the cupcake again. "But I changed my mind," she added quickly, "and joined Starfleet instead."

Sybok leaned forward. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"Not really." Her refusal confirmed his suspicions. Every human he met seemed to have this pain lingering just under the surface, to such an extent that by now he couldn't see it all unless an outside force hinted at it. "I was young, and I had to learn things the hard way. There was a man, and—I was just so stupid..."

"But it’s all in the past." He smiled. "There’s no point regretting it now."

Though, overall, Sybok regretted little of his past: only that he hadn’t let himself get stronger before he took on the entire system of Vulcan tradition.

\--

Protz and Virani sat at their consoles talking about June's communiqué from Starfleet, and Sybok leaned back in his chair and read _The Trader from Andoria_. It wasn't the best period romance he had read from three hundred years ago, but something about the indigo prose and overindulgent scenery description made it a comfortable read.

The sirens flared through the halls and the lights flashed from green to red above the consoles. Sybok fumbled with his padd but stuffed it beneath the console anyway, and then turned back to his console to see all the readings shoot up towards their operation limits. "We're going Warp Eight?" he asked his colleagues, voice raised over the alert.

"Yeah—I'm going to check the cores," Virani said as she got up from her chair. "Make sure the containments aren't stressed."

Sybok leaned over to the see the star chart Protz had pulled up on her console. "I wonder why we're heading towards the Neutral Zone."

"So do I," Protz said, "but there's a separator that needs to be checked on the sub-level."

He met the look she gave him and smiled a little before finally getting out of his chair. "You don't have to tell me twice—anything I should look for?"

"If we start pushing past Warp Nine, I'll yell." Protz began to fine-tune some of the controls on her panel. "That should give you enough time to run."

"Thanks," Sybok replied, not entirely sarcastic, and jogged off for the sublevel.

  
It turned out, even after Sybok had walked a complete circuit around the cores to make sure they wouldn't burst out of their reactors in rebellion, that the _Enterprise_ still missed whatever it had been rushing towards that night. The star chart showed that they were supposed to be hovering right over Outpost 4, but there was no mention of it in the daily briefings.

"The reason it has not been noted," Spock said to him during dinner the next day over a heaping scoop of mashed potatoes and gravy, "is because it has ceased to exist. We are currently analyzing its general distress signal for the exact cause of its disappearance."

"Looking at its location in space, couldn't you assume that the Romulans—?"

"Starfleet Command does not accept assumptions, regardless of how obvious it may seem."

"That's wasteful."

"I am not at liberty to agree or disagree with your assessment." Spock took a sip from his glass of water.

Sybok watched as his own fork balanced on a single outer prong at the edge of his plate. He knew Spock had to keep some boundaries between them when it came to those matters, but if he kept asking, prodding, he might get gain some headway in understanding this human bureaucracy. "Will your report have any effect on the assignments they give us?"

Spock set the glass down. "If it is not an anomaly, yes. Our orders are given at the discretion of Admiral Pike; I have known him to be a reasonable man."

"But he doesn't have to be reasonable," Sybok said, and let the fork turn slowly in place. "He’s human, you know."

"Indeed—no doubt you believe that’s an advantage."

"It is." Sybok grinned. "It keeps things interesting, for one, and you wouldn't still be here if you didn't like it."

\--

If a recent away mission had been a bit too taxing—and that thing a few days before with yetis had been—Sybok accepted playing kal-toh instead fine-tuning his brother's martial arts. He didn't have to worry about getting punched in the jaw (as much).

Sybok twirled the small steel rod between his fingers. "Have you heard from our illustrious father recently?"

"I have." Spock watched him from across the desk, arms folded over his chest.

"And?"

"I answered your question."

Sybok rolled his eyes. "Did he give you any news about the colony? Its development? Infrastructure? Has he issued a warrant for me?"

Spock's brows furrowed. "Why would he ask for your arrest?"

"He might have run out of things to do." Sybok placed the rod, letting the magnet do the rest.

"He did not mention any such acts to me." Spock leaned forward and took one of the rods off the pile. "However, he has asked me to continue monitoring your behavior among others, in the event that you should replicate your previous actions."

Sybok's hand clenched into a fist underneath the table. "Then why are you telling me this?"

"Because you have a history of maintaining a pattern of behavior regardless of external forces." Spock glanced up from the jumble of rods to Sybok. "Would you change it now?"

"No."

"Precisely." The console at the side of the desk chirped, and Spock leaned over to tap the screen. "Spock here."

"Hey, Spock," came Kirk's voice, tired, "we've received a distress call with orders from Starfleet to follow up on it…we should get there in about three hours. I'd get some rest before we have to deal with—whatever. Just get some rest."

"I suggest you do the same, Captain."  
Kirk snorted. "Right. See you in a bit." The console beeped softly with the conclusion of the message, and Spock's attention fell back to the game between them.

"Do you plan on taking his advice?" Sybok asked.

"No." Spock reached over to place the steel rod. It snapped into place.

Sybok grabbed another rod, turning it again between his fingers. "What if you do need the rest?"

"I have been kept from strenuous activity for two days by Leonard; my energy levels are already adequate for these circumstances."

"If that's what you think—but we can continue this game tomorrow. Wouldn't want you to overexert your mental capabilities," Sybok flashed a grin before beginning to rise from the chair.

"Wait, _sa-kai_ ," Spock said, and Sybok sank back down, wary. "I have another question."

"Yes?"

"What are your intentions toward Miss Chapel?"

Sybok leaned back in the chair, watching Spock from across the desk, who stared back at him. "Why do you ask?" He had been so distracted by everyone else, by his job, by Christine to really notice how much Spock had seen of their interactions—not that he was ashamed by any of it. He wanted to know what Spock was going to base his conclusion on.

"Because it is essential to my observations and the analysis of your behavior." All at once, Sybok felt like he was on Vulcan again, under the watchful eye of the government, his professors, his father. He didn't want to include Spock in that category, not when Spock usually knew when to leave him alone. Unfortunately for Spock, he could emulate those people too well, much better than he could as a child, and it was beginning to trip every survival instinct that Sybok had forgotten while on this ship.

"You identify groups," Spock continued as if reciting mental notes, "then you target individuals within those groups who would be most responsive to your suggestions. T'Leris' father was Chancellor of the Science Academy, for instance."

The name struck memories, good and bad and bright and now painful since all of this guesswork was completely wrong, and for the sake of the rest of his work day (starting in about four hours), Sybok decided that he didn't want to hear anymore of this. "You've been reading too many of those reports," Sybok said, standing up again. When or how Spock got a hold of the report the asylum wrote up was beyond his concern. "I'm not a criminal, Spock. If you've been watching me all this time, you should know that.

"And I didn't choose T'Leris because of her father, or her clan. I chose her in the same way you've chosen your humans: they need you, you need them—one fantastic mix of defense against the cold, lonely universe.” Sybok could still remember the day it had happened, could still feel the pain that had radiated from her when her first intended had died. What kind of monster would he be, if he hadn't reached out to comfort her?

"This isn't as complicated as antimatter flux, Spock. Most relationships aren't." He walked out the door.

He took a long and circular route to his cabin. When he finally stepped inside, his annoyance had faded to negligible levels along with his memories. The questions lingered: why did Spock have to adopt that kind of position, or ask him those questions? Hadn't he proved himself enough these last three years?

The room was dark and he could hear the faint, sleeping wheezes from his roommate, so Sybok avoided the bedroom and slumped down into one of the desk chairs instead. He wasn't on Vulcan, he wasn't on Gault—none of those questions really mattered because it was Starfleet that took his name hostage for now. Sybok rubbed his brow. Why had he sacrificed freedom for an armada in the first place?

Sybok glanced over to the PADD at the side of the desk. The screen was still dimmed over the warp calculations he had been working on the night before. He reached over to grab the stylus, tapped the screen so that it lit up proper, and then pulled it closer.

Over the next several hours he lost himself in the calculations and the research, trying new things and tweaking the variables in this near-ideal case until he was right on the cusp of something. Jogging to work, he was fortunate enough to meet Keenser in the turbolift (who eyed both him and his PADD) so that he wasn't technically late (regardless of the giggles Protz and Virani smothered behind their hands).

They chased off Romulans to the edge of the Neutral Zone from another damaged outpost (and he watched the cores huff and roar) before he finally decided to run the equations he had through the computer simulators (conveniently connected from his console and unoccupied for once). Another fifteen minutes of fiddling with variables and it looked feasible and realistic. All he needed was some material help from the materials laboratories and access to the warp cores, and maybe some external opinions.


	5. June '61 - July '62

During the quiet hours of his supposed sleeping-period, Sybok turned over the story Spock had told him on the first night they had reunited, about how people and events moved during the Narada incident. Transwarp beaming had been mentioned in passing, as if it were not undiscovered and completely insane in the context of modern physics. And Spock didn't seem interested in it at all, which told him that either Spock knew enough to not bother with it, for danger or practicality or plain jealousy (at the fact he hadn't discovered it?).

So—he couldn't ask Spock about it. He had to go to the source.

First he tried to talk to Keenser about it over a cabbage stew that the man seemed to like, but once he mentioned "transwarp" Keenser frowned, took his stew, and left the mess hall.

An entire free shift wasted on a stew he didn't even like.

  
"I thought Vulcans didn't eat meat?" Scott asked, loading his plate with square sausage.

"They don't, usually." Sybok followed Scott along the other side of the trays.

"Then what's the occasion?" Scott pulled some black pudding onto his plate, too.

"Nothing—I'm only trying some new recipes." As Scott started to make his way towards the tables, Sybok slipped around the end of the trays to follow him, and sat across from him. "Actually," he started before Scott could get a word in, "I wanted to ask you about your warp theories."

Scott's brows rose. "Oh yeah? Which one?"

"The one that brought you onto the _Enterprise_ the first time." At the blank look he got, Sybok elaborated, "Transwarp beaming, I'm assuming. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to hear about it."

"Well, I can't tell you the formula, top secret, you know—"

Sybok smiled. "You don't have to." That would take the fun out of it. "But I'm sure you have the concepts behind it—and I'd love to hear it."

  
After his talk with Scott, Sybok knew what he needed to do with space in the _Enterprise_ , outside the _Enterprise_ , behind them, in front of them, from their starting point to their destination. The warp cores weren't built for what Sybok wanted to try—do—but they didn't have to stay that way. He had seen them breathe and flex through all the stress Kirk had put them through, and it seemed to Sybok that they wanted to grow into something better than what they were.

First, he needed materials. He knew the chemistry department worked alpha shift, right where Spock could watch them not blow up half the ship. He also knew they liked their flavoured ethanol and complex sugars, and if there was ever an offer for free food and wine, they'd flock to it and linger until it stopped flowing or they were lulled into an insulin-induced slumber. Human physiology was so predictable.

The occasion would have to be McCoy's birthday. Sybok slept four hours through alpha shift that day before he was up again, cooking rich, meaty meals and mixing his own special brand of bright red punch. Nothing strictly intoxicating—just a nice, sweet drink. The entire meal set was ready by the start of the party in beta shift, and Sybok was there to see the beginning.

McCoy managed to break off from the pack for a few minutes to survey the trays, looking both incredulous and bewildered. "Look at all this," he muttered to himself, "Someone might think this is something important."

"Maybe it is?" Sybok said, setting up the little cups by the punch bowl. "The food alone wouldn't bring that many people." He jerked his head in the direction of the lingering crowd.

"Yeah, it would—you've never been to med school."

Sybok chuckled. "And I don't intend to." Though he was already familiar with the culture of always searching for a feast among famine, not that he had held any life but his own in his hands. The cups all set up and the ladle lying neat in the bowl, Sybok stepped back from the table. "Enjoy your birthday, Doctor."

For an alibi, Sybok traded greetings and ate little. He said greetings to Spock, Christine, Nyota, and Kirk (though the captain was difficult to get a hold of until he started goading Spock into a drinking game—Sybok tried to tell him that was a bad decision but whatever the captain does with his bourbon is his decision). Then, when the hall was bustling with activity and conversation, Sybok took his drink and slipped out through the galley, discarded his glass into the sink along the way, and walked through the empty corridors towards the laboratories.

  
Maybe he hadn't thought this through, entirely. He had the platinum rods, the gold bars, the tools that no one would notice, and the grade-A plasma sealants that would guarantee his apparatus wouldn't explode, but he didn't have any specified place to build that wasn't his cabin, the chemistry laboratory, or the workplace. Fortunately, he had a nondescript box and several hours until his work shift actually started.

The cargo bay never looked so appealing.

\--

It felt like he was eighteen all over again. He knew the theory inside and out, he knew the mathematics that went with it, and he had the tools to implement it on something real and tangible. For the first time in years it felt like he had achieved the peak of his mental abilities again, and it showed in his work and his games—he even won a game of kal-toh against Spock. Practice made it all easier, and it left him enough energy to spare some time with Christine (and a pastel and a sketchbook, she had very nice angles).

He worked on his apparatus through the end of August and majority of September. He spent his Starfleet-mandated birthday holiday welding metals together until he had platinum and gold linked together like the rods of a completed kal-toh icosidodecahedron, twenty triangles and twenty pentagons patterned on the skeleton. Aesthetically, he rather liked it, and if he didn't have bigger plans for it, he would have accepted it as an expensive piece of décor.

"Sybok."

The tricorder and its probe fumbled out of Sybok's hands once he heard Spock's voice, but he let them drop so he could jerk the black canvas over the sphere, and turned to face his brother. Spock stood twenty feet away, hands folded behind his back, silhouetted by the edges of the spotlight overhead. "Spock—what do you want?"

"What have you constructed?" Spock's boots clicked on the floor as he approached, the sound echoing off of the boxes and the high ceiling.

"Why do you think I've constructed something?"

"Because you have stolen supplies from my departments and excused yourself from regular social events for the last five weeks and three days." Spock stopped before the hidden apparatus, and he tilted his head. "You only do so when you are captivated by something more important."

"That obvious?"

"I recognize behaviors that emulate my own."

Or more like behaviors Spock had copied. Sybok could remember tinkering on his circuit boards and letting Spock watch, and later on, his little brother immersed himself in the same dedicated concentration. "Well," Sybok moved between Spock and the apparatus, "if I show you, will it stop you from arresting me?"

"I do not intend to arrest you."

"Right, after I've supposedly stolen the parts for it. Then what do you intend to do?" He lowered the tricorder to the ground via its strap, and his eyes never left Spock. "I'm not going to give you the chance to destroy it."

"I have yet to see it, and you assume that I will destroy it?"

"You wouldn't be the first."

" _Sa-kai_." Spock continued to stand there, patient, apparently waiting for him to draw the canvas off. "If you believe that this is beyond my comprehension—"

Sybok laughed. "No, that's—it's not that you won't understand. You'll understand how, but not why." Maybe he would, but Sybok didn't want to explain it. Their language was unforgiving to the explanation, and Standard wasn't much better.

"Another erroneous assumption." Spock stepped around him, and his hand shot out to grab the canvas, but Sybok grabbed his wrist in a tight grip.

"Don't, Spock."

Spock looked up at him. "Then show me what you are hiding." Sybok eased his grip off, letting Spock let his hand drop back to his side, and then reached over to grip the canvas. He hesitated for a moment--was this really such a good idea?--but this was his brother--and then pulled it off the apparatus. The platinum and steel gleamed in the white overhead lights.

Sybok watched as Spock stepped around it, examining the corners and the hollow faces from all sides until he had completed a full circuit around it. His head tilted to the side, and he blinked once before looking back up at Sybok. "This looks similar to something you constructed before."

The thought made him smile. "You remember that? It's not exactly the same, though, it's better: I've implemented fifteen years of theory into it, so it should work now. Not that the other one would have failed."

"You never shared its explicit purpose."

"It's...an amplifier, of sorts," he explained. He reached out to test one of the welded joints; all solid, good.

"What is it meant to amplify?" Spock asked when Sybok didn't elaborate.

Sybok took a seat on the work stool next to the unofficial toolbox on the floor. If Spock hadn't destroyed it now he doubted he would destroy it after he told him. The seed of scientific interest had already been planted. "The warp cores."

Then again, maybe not. Spock's brows furrowed, and his shoulders tensed. "On this star ship?"

"I don't see any other one here, do you?"

Spock turned to face him, "I cannot allow you to conduct experiments with our sole source of power. Should the amplifier fail or damage the power delivery systems, we will be defenseless or obliterated, depending on the degree of failure."

"I'm not going to connect it to all the warp cores, only one, and if it works--"

"All of the cores are interconnected for maximum efficiency, surely you--"

"I do know that, but one of them can be separated, safely. What about the benefits if I succeed, Spock? Don't you want to know?" Sybok slid off the stool and stepped up to Spock, who shifted back.

"I am more concerned with why you feel compelled to amplify the cores. The _Enterprise_ already has established physical limitations."

"Limitations." Sybok waved his arm out to the side. "Maybe the hull and the welds have limitations, but I'm not going to change the ship, I'm going to change the space around it, more than our warp field already does. We could go faster, Spock." He placed his hands on Spock's shoulders. "We could go farther, we wouldn't spend so much time staring out at empty space--all the _Enterprise_ needs is more power, and someone who knows what to do with that power."

Spock stared at him. "And you believe you are that person."

Sybok grinned. "More than anyone else on this ship. I studied this for years on Vulcan--and thanks to your help, it's all come back to me now."

Spock pulled back from his grip and took one, two, three steps away from him. "Then you are still obsessed with what consumed you on Vulcan?"

"Obsessed? I'm following through on what my project was before they stopped me."

"And if you were sabotaged again?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your pattern of behavior, _sa-kai_. I remember your anger when they confiscated your work at the Science Academy, and the crimes you committed soon after. You destroyed for the sake of your work."

“That wasn’t just because of…” Sybok trailed off as he saw Spock pull the communicator off of his belt. "What are you doing?"

"I cannot allow you to alter the warp cores. I suggest you leave the area." Spock flipped open the communicator. "Spock to security."

Sybok hand clenched into a fist at his side, and he opened his mouth to say something, but a deep voice was already speaking back on the communicator. He took a breath—did Spock think this was some kind of reprieve from destroying it anyway?—and ran.

\--

For a couple of days, Sybok brooded. He thought about how he was going to get the amplifier back, how he could convince Spock that he wasn't planning to destroy anything, how this was really going to help the _Enterprise_ —and then Isaura mentioned one morning that he was beating the eggs too hard for too long, and Sybok reconsidered how much he should indulge in this anger. He shouldn't project it, though he probably was, so he tried to rein it back under his usual carefree persona.

Which didn't mean he would stop trying to get the amplifier back.

"So," he asked Spock during one of their weekly training sessions, "have you looked at it yet?"

"I have." Spock's spin kick just missed his jaw. "It is remarkably simple for its supposed purpose."

"Can I have it back? Or at least work on it?"

"No."

After this (and a second and third rejection), Sybok approached Mister Scott. They talked during lunch about the concepts: amplifying the warp field, generating greater power, and possibly bringing the _Enterprise_ past Warp 10 (Scott had a good laugh at that, but Sybok didn't see what was funny about it).

"You know," he mentioned one lunch in October, "I heard that the physics department is working on a device to strengthen the ship's warpfield."

"Really?" Scott paused to take a sip of his coffee then set the cup down. "Where'd you hear that?"

Sybok smiled. "I have connections."

  
He planned to wait until the following Tuesday to casually ask Spock whether he had received any inquiries from Mister Scott, and to spend the time between now and then completely oblivious. However, Spock tracked him down the very next night, right after he had found a nice comfy couch to squish into. He stopped right in front of Sybok, looming over him with his hands behind his back.

"Do you need something, Spock?" Sybok blinked up at his brother.

A muscle tightened in Spock's jaw, and he grabbed a nearby chair by the arm to drag it right where he had been standing. He sat down, and Sybok ignored the instincts that felt caged in. "We must discuss something of importance, which I believe you are already aware of."

"I'm trying to read, if you haven't noticed," Sybok said, and tapped the PADD in his lap.

"Your romance subscription can be postponed."

"There are three chapters here that I haven't read—"

"Which, on average, will take approximately fifteen minutes to read." Spock clasped his hands together. " _Sa-kai_."

Sybok sighed, and he placed the PADD aside. "Fine." His elbow propped on the arm rest and he leaned his head against his hand, staring expectantly at Spock. "Yes?"

"You have knowingly baited Mister Scott to request information about your device," Spock began, voice low though no one in the room seemed to pay them much mind. "You are once again using others to achieve your goals."

"No man exists in a vacuum, Spock—we all use people to help us toward our goals." Sybok leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. "Don't you think the chief engineer should be interested in that, too? I'm not obligated to keep silent about its existence. I made it to work, and if I have to go to greater lengths for you to believe me and try it, then so be it."

Spock stared at him again with that mix of uncertainty, confusion, and probably horror. Sybok watched for any arm muscles tightening. "Suppose," Spock began slowly, "that this was connected to a single warp core, and the effects were as you predicted. What changes would we experience?"

Sybok grinned. Curiosity always won out. "Inside the ship, nothing. Outside—we'd be able to move through space at greater speeds than warp nine, and for longer periods. In fact, our scale probably doesn't apply to those speeds, but I like to call it 'warp eleven.'"

"That is mathematically impossible to achieve," Spock reminded him, not looking as impressed as he should be.

"Precisely—but it'll happen. The universe shouldn't be so limiting as to chain us to warp ten, so it's only fitting this breakthrough should be eleven."

"In your opinion." Spock brushed off the topic. He clearly didn't appreciate the symbolism there, but Sybok was just glad that he was curious about the possibilities in the first place. Realization would come later. "What is our destination, that it requires such speed?"

Sybok grabbed the PADD again and pulled it into his lap. "I told you that you wouldn't understand that part."

"Location coordinates would be sufficient for my understanding."

"I doubt it, but if you think so…" Sybok pulled up a blank screen on the PADD and popped the stylus out of the side holder. He drew two concentric circles: one large one that filled up the screen and another smaller one about the size of a chocolate truffle.

"Let's say this is our galaxy, and we're right here." He scratched a jagged spiral in the lower left quadrant of the big circle. "With the power we could have if all the cores were amplified, I believe we could go from here," he tapped their location, "to here," he drew a line towards the center of the galaxy. "In about a week. Maybe two. Right to the center."

Spock said nothing for almost a minute, and then leaned back in his seat with his hands still folded together. "If this were to scale—"

"Which it's not."

"—then you propose that we can traverse approximately ten thousand light years within two weeks."

"Yes," Sybok answered, and they stared at each other over this hand-drawn map for a few more moments.

"This is impossible," Spock said.

Sybok grinned. "We'll never know for certain until we try it."

"Aside from embracing the insanity of this idea," Spock tilted his head slightly, looking down at the map, "what importance does this destination hold? Assuming one could breach the energy barrier around the galaxy center and survive to witness the core."

"Assume? You're making your own assumption that there’s a barrier, since no one has ever gone that far. But that aside—do you remember your mythology lessons?"

"Specify."

"What they told you about Sha-Ka-Ree."

"The category is still too vague. Do you refer to its location, its purpose, differing interpretations—" Spock stopped, looking at Sybok and probably the smug expression on his face. "You believe the core is where it is located." And then he frowned. "Is this the same message you communicated to your followers?"

Sybok laughed. "Followers? They were friends that helped me broadcast my ideas—"

"Did T'Leris believe you?"

"Yes, she did." Sybok curled his fingertips into the couch cushion. "She always did. But the point is that the location's at the core, like the greatest oasis you've ever seen and it's only as hot as the morning dawn."

"And how do you know this?"

Sybok gave his brother a tight smile. This was the limit of Spock's understanding right here, and if Sybok gave him the truth, there would probably be a nice, clean white room in the back of sickbay with his name on it. And he liked his cabin and its cookie-cutter décor much more. "I just do."

It was a lot easier than telling him that was what his mother had told him in the last minutes of her katric existence, that he had trespassed and destroyed a man to get that information. And he still knew it was true, but he couldn't tell Spock he heard trans-galactic divine voices in his meditation, either.

\--

November passed with more questions from Scott and more annoyance from Spock, but Sybok stayed out of it and focused on new recipes and his post in Engineering. Towards the end of November, the _Enterprise_ docked at a star base for maintenance. The shopping opportunities were limited, but there were a few restaurant kitchens he managed to sneak into to get a taste of Andorian-Terran fusion food and cryogenically preserved seafood. He might have had a mussel or two.

After a good dinner and a cool drink, Sybok took a walk around the star base to get a feel for the place and the people. It felt bigger than it had looked from the ship, but the people felt stiffer with a palpable tension hanging in the air.

He found the two-tiered observation lounge at the top of the center sphere of the base with curved, clear walls that let in the starlight, as well as an empty couch with a good view of both sky and the floors below. All the conversation mashed together in a low hum, and when that mixed with the unfamiliar thoughts in the room, Sybok felt tired, and he closed his eyes—just for a short time.

"Hi, Sybok," Nyota's voice woke him out of his nap along with the shift of the couch next to his seat. He blinked awake, and then looked over at her.

"Evening, Nyota." Sybok smiled. "Shouldn't someone be taking you out to dinner?"

She smiled back at him, leaning against the back of the couch and crossing one leg over another. That skirt never looked shorter, but his mind was still more occupied with sleeping than uniform details. "Spock and I finished a few minutes ago—Jim kidnapped him for a little 'meeting,'" she said, and pointed down at the lower level. Sybok looked over, blinked some sleepiness out of his eyes, and then saw Spock and Kirk sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at a round table with an older gentleman with a white uniform.

"Who are they talking with?" he asked, and yawned.

"Admiral Pike," Nyota said. "Though why he's all the way out here…" She shook her head. "What have you been doing?"

"Oh," Sybok ran a hand through his hair, "Not much."

They talked as the command meeting went on, small talk about chicken dishes Nyota wanted to see and how that picture of Mount Seleya added to the décor of her quarters. Sybok didn't even realize when the meeting had broken up until Kirk and Spock appeared behind them, both looking a little tired but Kirk hiding it under a smile.

"Anything happening?" Nyota asked, reaching up with her fingers outstretched.

Spock touched her hand, intertwining their fingers before helping her to her feet. "Nothing that would affect our normal vigilance."

"Yeah, nothing but skirmishes," Kirk added, hands braced on the back of the couch. "Hey, I told Bones I'd meet him at the bar after I was done with Pike -- d'you all want to come?"

"Why not?" Sybok stood and stretched. "They have a piano in there, too. You should see if you can still play, Spock."

"That should not be in doubt," Spock may have puffed out his chest, and Sybok rolled his eyes.

\--

During Christmas Eve, Sybok saw them all sitting together: Spock, Nyota, McCoy, and Kirk filling up the curve of an entire couch in lazy, punch-glass-waving pleasure.

Not that he cared too much. He took another swig of something a little stronger than punch before meandering across the room to ask Christine for a dance. Later, he gave her an oil painting of some of the African lilies in the arboretum, which he managed to sketch before the botanists harvested them.

\--

Turning thirty-two in standard years wasn’t any type of milestone, but Sybok still wanted to bake a cake for Spock. There wasa Black Forest one he had been researching, but he wanted to see if Spock would actually eat it. His brother would afford some light intoxication every now and then…

“Computer, where is Commander Spock?” Sybok pulled on some black socks. He had thought of the cake all through his shift

“Commander Spock is in the gymnasium.” Probably swimming again; at least he didn’t have to get into the water to talk to him.

Sybok yawned, checked his reflection in the mirror, and walked out of the cabin. He passed by several people on the way to the rec rooms and main cafeteria, trading smiles and “hello”s with everyone until he walked through the large doors into the heart of the athletic deck. The gym was less populated than unusual, but it was mid-beta-shift; everyone would be working.

Spock wasn’t at the pool, the weight machines, or the track, which left the private training rooms. Sybok wandered down that hallway, peeking into rooms until he got to the room at the very end of the hall. He looked around the open doorway.

There Spock was.

There he was, occupied. Spock had Kirk pressed up against the wall, one thigh pressed up between his captain’s legs and their lips coming together, hands gripping tight at each other's clothing.

“Wow,” Sybok said from the archway, blinking at them. “You two might want to invest in a private room.”

Spock pulled away immediately at his voice, still breathless. He stared at Sybok, and then looked back at Kirk. They shared a long look, and then Kirk reached out to grab Spock by the shirt and pull him back into a fierce kiss.

“Right.” Sybok turned his back to them, trying to ignore the noises and fabric rustling between them. “I’ll make a Black Forest for the both of you.”

As he walked back to the galley, Sybok tried to scrub the image from his mind. What was Spock trying to do? The doctor, yes, he could imagine that—maybe even see Nyota accepting that or getting involved with it. But getting involved with the captain was risky, not the most intelligent decision he had seen his brother make—

And what did he expect to do? Bond with all of them? Was he planning to establish a harem?

Sybok needed to bake a cake. Cookies. _Something_.

\--

Their missions skirted closer and closer towards the Neutral Zone until they weren't more than ten minutes from it at all times and pushing the boundaries in every dimension. In February they found a colony with discarded Romulan garments. In March, they chased off a single ship from the orbit of a small colony.

In April, they found the _Excalibur_ between two warbirds in the middle of alpha shift, and by the time Sybok had stumbled down to the engineering decks wide awake, they had destroyed one and were on the way to crippling the other—if it hadn't disappeared. That lingering feeling of a job unfinished left everyone in a sore mood, and on top of that, his rest period had been interrupted.

"Hey, Sybok," Nyota greeted him in the hallway with a little wave. "Going back to bed?"

"I was thinking about it," he replied with a tired smile, but then he faltered and stopped. "Is that—are you wearing a ring?"

"Yes. It's nice, isn't it?" Nyota turned her hand to show him the diamond and the emeralds glinting on either side, but she didn't stop walking down the corridor. "Have to go, sorry." She grinned.

"Wait!" Sybok turned in place to follow her path up the corridor. She'd probably take that corner up ahead. "Who is it from?" he called after her.

"Who do you think?" she called back, and did take the corner out of sight.

\--

Sybok tried to get an audience with Spock about that ring business. Was it a proposal? Was it on the right finger for that? Or was it just a piece of jewelry he had given her? Where had he purchased it?

Yet every time he found some time to walk over, Sybok either forgot to ask or something else happened to distract them all: more attacks where the assailants came, attacked, and then disappeared. Sybok slept less and baked more; the crew ate twice as much desserts as they had before. He suspected that Spock ate more than that, and it showed in his energy and agility. Though Spock sparred with Kirk more, Sybok had seen them fight, and if they really lost themselves in it, he wouldn't be the only one watching.

The first week of June turned out to be completely uneventful, and after the first three days of relaxation, Sybok finally decided to find Spock and get the answers to his questions.

The computer told him that Spock was still in his office, so Sybok headed there first. He smiled at the young yeoman in the blue dress nearby before letting himself into the office. The pocket doors slid shut behind him. "Spock."

Spock looked up from his seat behind the desk—still working, though it was already past the start of beta shift. " _Sa-kai_ ," a nod, "did you read the tactical communiqué?"

"Not today." Sybok walked over and took a seat in front of Spock's desk. "Why? Am I being sent anywhere?"

"Not explicitly." Spock leaned back in his chair, folding his hands together. "We are due to intercept an attack on Gault within the next twelve hours."

Just when Sybok had tried to relax into the chair again, he bolted upright, one hand gripping at the arm rest. "What? Why would they want to attack that dirt pile?" He couldn't remember anything valuable on that colony: no refining plants, no factories not related to farming equipment, nothing related to starships or weapons.

"Surely, _sa-kai_ , you would be aware of Gault's strategic importance," Spock said. "It is one of the top food producers for the Federation, including the inner systems."

"So what do the Romulans want to do? Starve us?"

Spock inclined his head. "Perhaps, or it may be a lure to distract us from another offensive."

"Did you tell Command that?"

"Jim has informed them of the possible intentions of this attack."

"Well, at least they know," Sybok said, but he didn't have any more faith in the admiralty as he did any other council of old men. He had already suffered at the hands of senile men and didn't want to repeat the experience—though it seemed he was going right back into it, now.  
"Why don't you set aside the work?" Sybok gestured to the three or four PADDs on Spock's desk. "I want to talk to you about that ring on Nyota's hand."

Spock arched an eyebrow. "What is there to discuss?"

"Is it a piece of jewelry or a placeholder?" Sybok leaned forward in his seat. "Do you plan on pushing it further than 'engagement'?"

"Eventually, we plan for it to progress, but not at this time." Spock stood. He straightened the front of his shirt with a small tug. "If you will excuse me—I must discuss our approach with the captain."

Sybok waved a hand in a vague gesture. "Fine, but I still have questions about this. Sarek doesn't appreciate these impromptu marriages, if I recall." He got up from his chair as well to follow Spock out.

"That did not prevent your actions."

"True, but who do you think he's going to blame if you start taking after me?"

\--

Twelve hours – it felt like more like a time limit than a waiting period. He hadn’t been to Gault since he left, and he didn’t want to go back now. The thought distracted him through the rest of beta shift and his work shift, and when he finally wanted to get some sleep, he couldn’t. They were two hours away from Gault, and he spent those two hours staring at the ceiling and thinking of a little room in a farmhouse attic, false smiles, and an aimless life.

If he hadn’t recovered his mind, Sybok supposed that he could have stayed. If he didn’t know he could do better, he could have been content with packaging peaches and harvesting quadrotriticale. None of this theoretical physics, warp engineering. Just the seasons, the harvest, and physical labor.

Sybok rolled over onto his side to stare at the little star clock on the bedside table. Only another hour until they pulled into orbit. He pulled himself out of bed and into the bathroom for a shower.

  
Not more than half an hour after they pulled into orbit, Spock requested him at the transporter room, and when he got there, Kirk and McCoy were already suiting up with phasers, communicators, and medical kits. Spock stood near the doorway with a phaser at one hip and his tricorder dangling onto the other.

"Is it that bad?" Sybok asked, after giving another look to the medical kits.

"There is insufficient data at this time; we are preparing for the worst possible outcome," Spock said, and held out a belt with a phaser and communicator to him.

Sybok looked at the belt, sighed, and then took it. "Don't think we'll be needing these." He secured the belt around his waist. "You don't really need me, either, but—" he caught Spock's sharp look, "—I suppose I'll assist however I can." But he still didn't want to. Sybok took a long, deep breath as he stood on one of the transport pads, and closed his eyes when he heard the hum of the transporter.

The scent of burnt wood filled his next breath, and Sybok nearly choked on it. He saw the black soot on the ground beneath his boots, and when he looked up the scene didn't change except for the horizon line and the azure sky. Buildings that had once been farmhouses sat, gutted, among barren fields. A collection of more fortunate structures rested on a hill in the distance, topped with a rising plume of dark, thick smoke.

"This isn't the capital." Sybok looked to Spock and the other two men. "Why did we beam down here?"

"This is where they hit, so we're starting here," Kirk said, and starting walking off towards the town.

Sybok brought up the rear of the party. One hand rested on the phaser while he kept looking side to side. If he looked just right at one of those hills, tried to imagine what the field looked like full of wheat—"Fairshire isn't that big," Sybok said. He could remember a harvest here, the sun at his back and the tractor growling along. "If we don't find anyone in town, there's probably no one to find."

"Goddamn Romulans," McCoy muttered from his left. He toed at a charred stick that crumpled into finer ash.

"Cursing their existence will not eliminate the consequences of it," Spock said. He was busy fiddling with the knobs on his tricorder.

"Yeah." McCoy toed another ash pile. "But it makes me feel better."

When they reached Fairshire proper, they saw that the only thing to have completely survived was the concrete road that wound through the middle and out north towards the highway. Spock's tricorder read life signs while Sybok could feel the pain broadcast in waves; together, they found two children under some rubble and an old man pinned beneath a tractor. He would probably lose that leg. Sybok knew the man, of course—a good machinist he had seen on a handful of occasions, though he had been younger then. Fortunately, the recognition only went one way.

After those three had been beamed up to the _Enterprise_ , Sybok walked to the edge of the town on the other side of the hill. The ground dipped to become a large valley cleaved in half by a wide river—Marblefall—with a bigger town set on a bigger hill two miles away. His chest tightened, and not just because it had the same smoke clouds, or that the fields were just as black leading up to it. "That's Highbourne," he said as Spock caught up to him, still fiddling with his tricorder.

"You lived there?"

"Most of the time." Sybok started walking down the road towards Highbourne, and Spock followed. "Ironic, isn't it?"

A beat—extra processing. "I do not understand," Spock replied.

Sybok chuckled. "That's all right. It took me a while, too." A quick rush of footsteps signaled Kirk and McCoy approaching behind them, distracting him from explaining it any further.

Kirk jogged up to his other side."If you're going over there, we should beam over. It'll be faster in case—"

"I'll walk," Sybok said.

McCoy caught up to Kirk's side, too. "We can't wait for you to take a stroll when there might be people—"

"McCoy." Sybok looked ahead to the column of smoke rising from Highbourne into the sky. "I doubt anyone survived over there, but you and the captain can beam ahead and check. If there are survivors, I’ll join you."

"All right." Kirk took out his communicator. "What about you, Spock? Walking or beaming?"

"I shall accompany Sybok," Spock answered. Sybok looked over to meet the gaze of his brother, and gave him a little smile. Spock kept his neutral expression.

"Fine by me—Scotty, Bones and I are beaming up. There's a town west of here we need to get to."

"Aye, Captain." Scotty's voice filtered through the communicator. "Transporting you now." While Kirk and McCoy stopped, Sybok kept walking towards the town. After the two of them disappeared, he heard Spock catching up to him until he entered his peripheral vision. He wasn't adjusting his tricorder anymore.

They walked silently for a few yards, following the road towards the bridge over the river. “You didn’t have to follow me,” Sybok said, glancing over. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, you know. It’s only a walk.”

“It would be unwise to leave you isolated in this type of environment.”

“Looking out for me?” Sybok grinned. “That’s cute. What do you really want to know? We’ve got a mile and a half for you to ask.”

Spock’s boot scuffed against the asphalt. “I understand that you were relocated here following your sentencing, but what did the council intend for you to do? This does not appear to be a prison planet.”

“It’s not. They probably expected that I would die of boredom—which isn’t too hard, you know, there’s only so many bushels you can handle before they all start to blend together." He sighed. "But you see that building on the left, with the gabled third floor? The window on fire? That was my room." His fingers dug into his palm briefly before his hand relaxed again. He wondered if any of his stuff was still there.

Spock fell silent for a few moments, through which Sybok could hear the crackle of smoldering wheat from beside the road. "…you were a farmer, then."

Sybok laughed. "Literally, yes, but I am the worst farmer you'll ever meet."

He regaled to Spock tales of his equipment failures and meager garden harvests, all the result of his lack of enthusiasm and concentration. They found better uses for him before he ruined much: he could drive between the towns and package produce, among his more exotic talents. It kept him fed, clothed, and quasi-sane for two years until he seized the opportunity to leave.

His stories lasted them until the two-lane bridge. The Marblefall river wound slow through the valley, going off towards the coast twenty miles towards the west. Save for the destroyed earth, it almost seemed idyllic--sickeningly so.

Their communicators chirped.

Spock answered his first, pulling it off his belt. "Spock here."

"Everyone down on the planet," it was Nyota's voice, "we have an unidentified spacecraft coming from zero-five-mark-four, please take cover until we are able to identify the ship."

Sybok grabbed Spock by the arm and pulled him to the side and underneath the bridge in a little cramped corner. The soot on the ground blackened their clothes. "Didn't you say we were supposed to intercept an attack?" Sybok asked, peering out along one side of the bridge while Spock did the same on the other.

"They advanced faster than we anticipated, thus the destruction," Spock said. The bank slipped a little but Spock caught the metal support beam, and Sybok walked over to help him back up.

"So they're back for another hit?"

"It would seem so," Spock agreed, and brushed off some soot from his trousers. Not that it would matter, given that his trousers were already black--but Sybok wasn't about to argue fashion or hygiene at the moment. He returned back to his spot, looking towards the town just a mile away.

The communicator chirped again. "The ship has been identified as a Romulan warbird, repeat, a Romulan warbird. It has maneuvered to the other side of the planet, no current visual--" Spock snapped it shut, and Sybok looked over with an eyebrow raised. Spock ran up the bank again, out in the open, and turned sharply to cross the bridge.

Sybok ran after him, stumbling a little himself. "Spock!" he called after him, hesitated, and then ran after him. "What are you doing? You're an open target!"

"There are Romulans in orbit, and my captain is unguarded." Spock still sounded so calm, albeit breathless from the running.

"You can't beat a phaser or a transport beam on foot--" Just as Sybok said that, Spock ran faster, meeting the increasing slope up to the town without a stutter in his pace. Sybok felt an old wound pulling at his ribs and he cursed aloud before trying to match it. Why did they have to hurry? Kirk and McCoy had phasers, they had already faced their share of battles before, worse than this, and had emerged unscathed...

Spock was almost at the front gate when Sybok caught up with him. He grabbed Spock's arm, jerked him to the side, and pushed him up against the concrete side of the wall. "My advice to you," Sybok began, breathless, his grip tight, "is to look at what you're running in to before you run." He wasn't going to let Spock do something (more) stupid while he stood right here. Anything could have happened in the four minutes between the bridge and the gate. "Check your tricorder."

Spock glared at him, eyes narrowed and frustration projecting out against Sybok's own, but he reached down to his hip to check his tricorder. He let out a breath through his nose. "There are non-human individuals outside our immediate radius," he said quietly.

"That's great," Sybok said, leaning forward to get a view along the walls to either side. No one in sight. The wall was short; they could both scale it easily, but they needed to pick the right spot to avoid being seen by whoever might be roaming in the city. "Let's go," he said, and turned away from the gate, starting to walk along the side.

"This is not bringing us closer to Jim and Leonard," Spock pointed out, following him.

"It will," Sybok answered, and rounded the corner. If the layout hadn't changed, and the buildings were still there, then the best place should be somewhere around here. "Be patient--if they're caught, what good are we going to do if we're caught, too?" After a few more yards, he stopped, and then turned to Spock. "Can you climb this?" Spock glanced between him and the wall, and then nodded. "Good."

Sybok jumped up to grab the top edge of the wall and then pulled himself onto the top ledge, looking around again before jumping down in the shadow of a tall house. His old house; it still had the same flower box in the window and old (now older) transport in the rear driveway. Spock jumped down next to him after a few moments.

"When I needed to get out for a while," Sybok explained quietly as they moved towards the corner of the house, a perfect shadow between it and the next house over, "this would be it - all I had to do was get past the family."

Spock followed, but he peered inside the window. Sybok knew what he would see--a tiny piano and a large dining table, maybe a couch that had been reupholstered. "Would they have stopped you?"

"They would have tried to talk me out of it," Sybok moved, creeping along the side of the house. "Talk about feelings, choices - they knew I was guilty but they thought I was sick—you know, _troubled_."

Spock was on the verge of asking another question--a single syllable escaped him--but Sybok help up a hand as a mix of footsteps began to crunch through charred debris from a distance. The cadence was different, not familiar like Kirk and McCoy, so they both pressed themselves into the shadow of the house, growing with each moment as the sun set in the west and the darkness intensified. Not a problem for them, but if these were Romulans, their advantage might be outflanked; he didn't know how well their genetic cousins kept their natural gifts.

The people approaching spoke in a language Sybok couldn't understand. Then, Spock grabbed his hand, touching skin to skin, and the rough feeling of translation filtered through with surprising clarity. When had his brother become so adept at mental communication...?

Oh, wait.

When he glanced over, Spock glared at him, but the processing continued. Talking about the flight, dinner, their commander, the human captain and his companion (there was a spike of other emotions, roiling just below the surface of Spock's mind, but for his dignity, Sybok ignored it).

"What do you guys plan on doing, huh?" came Kirk's voice then, and Spock snatched his hand back and lurched forward. Sybok threw out an arm to hold him back, and Spock relaxed. "They'll still destroy your ship whether or not I'm on it."

"They will hesitate," a gruff voice answered. The footsteps were almost upon them then, and Sybok crouched, waiting for them to pass by. They were probably heading towards the gates opposite the ones Spock and he had just passed. Why, though, that was a question for another time. Though they weren't touching anymore, Sybok could feel Spock's impatience, itching to leap out and take care of whoever was holding his captain hostage.

Sybok looked back at his brother, and held his hand poised for the signal. Two Romulans, Kirk, and McCoy walked by. He let them pass by and then brought his hand down, and they both rushed out from the shadow of the house. The Romulans didn't have enough time to turn, much less shoot. A single pinch to the neck had them crumpled on the road in a sack of armor and clothes.

"Finally!" McCoy said, turning to look at them both. "And here I was beginning to think you two were going to wait until we were sittin' pretty up in their warbird."

"That's quite an unusual 'thank you.’" Sybok chuckled, and turned to look at their surroundings while his hand flexed by his side. "Are there anymore of them?"

"Regardless," Spock interjected, "Jim, Leonard—you should return to the _Enterprise_ in the event a combat situation develops."

"And what, leave you two down here?" Kirk scoffed. "I'm not leaving any of my crew down here, unprotected."

"We have phasers," Sybok pointed out.

"Against starship phasers? No. You'll both turn out like this." Kirk gestured to the burned buildings around them. "Besides, what would you do? Hang around until they came down to check—shit—" He reached for his phaser.

"Don't think about it, Captain," called a woman's voice from behind Sybok. He turned to see a woman in a short-skirt variation of the magenta-brown patterned Romulan uniform, flanked on either side by two soldiers. His own hand twitched, ready to pull his own phaser at any five of them, but they already had their phasers out; he'd never get a shot off, so he stayed silent as they approached.

"Against the wall," she said, motioning with her phaser, and the four of them shuffled to stand by the wall, hands pressing against the rough, soot-covered plaster. He could hear the rip as the belts came off along the line—McCoy's, Kirk's, Spock's—until finally the guard came to his, and there went his phaser and communicator. Sybok stifled the urge to sigh.

  
Sybok had never seen the inside of a Romulan ship before. It was nothing to compare to the gleaming white-and-black corridors of the _Enterprise_ , but the walls had a sharp, metallic tang—like the blood in his mouth after he tested the annoyance threshold of the lady commander. She had a good left hook.

To their credit, the Romulans put him and Spock and in a separate cell from Kirk and McCoy, though they didn’t have that many cells—they could still hear each other from opposite ends of the hallway if the tall, stern-faced guard let them. He didn’t.

Spock sat at one corner of the cell with his the pads of his fingers together in contemplation, and Sybok sat in the other with his arms folded over his chest. He stared at the shiny back of the guard’s helmet, and then looked over to Spock. When he glanced up, Sybok pushed himself off the floor and went over to sit next to him. “Any plans?”

“Incomplete,” Spock answered, brows coming together. “This forcefield appears inescapable.”

“I agree, it does.” Sybok rubbed his chin. “But we don’t need to get through the forcefield—it just needs to come down, correct?”

“Do you have a method for achieving this?”

“I might.” Sybok looked to the guard again, who glanced back at them before looking ahead again. “It depends whether you’ll take it as more evidence of my ‘pattern of behavior’ or a valid method to enable our escape.”

“I believe our immediate escape takes precedence over future interpretations of your actions—”

“Does it? I’m not joking, Spock—if this is going into the report saying that I've snapped, or that I'm criminally insane, something to get me back into an asylum again, there's nothing worse the Romulans can give me on their own prison planets. So tell me that you're not going to interpret this incorrectly."

"And if I do not?"

Sybok looked at him for a long moment, then looked away with a sigh. "I hope you're at least grateful that you're my little brother." He pushed himself off the floor and walked over to the forcefield. The air buzzed with it, and he could hear a low hum coming from all around the archway. "You," he said to the back of the guard's head. "Look at me."

The guard turned around and muttered something in Romulan, but it didn't matter to Sybok whether the man knew Standard or not. They had eye-contact, and Sybok's mind pushed forward through space-time and weak natural barriers. He had never done this with a Romulan before so the resistance felt strange, but soon Sybok found the similarities in their minds, and he felt young and powerful all over again.

The only difference being, Spock was still sitting there behind him, watching him, scrutinizing his decisions.

His mind pushed and pulled and the resistance grew and dissipated. When he felt comfortable with his hold, Sybok spoke in a steady, even voice, "Lower the barrier."

A beat passed in silence before the guard raised one hand to the security pad next to the archway. Three jabs at the buttons, and the forcefield powered down. Spock shifted behind him, but Sybok raised a hand to tell him to stop; distractions for either of them would break his charm before he was done.

"The other one," Sybok said as he stepped out of the cell. The guard moved back, one slow step at a time, until they came to the opposite end of the hall. Kirk and McCoy were already on their feet and standing just behind their own barrier, watching and waiting in silence. Another three jabs at the security pad, forceful and reluctant, and their barrier dropped as well.

He couldn't disable the man in the glamour, and he knew there was a sharp knife tucked in at the guard's waist, but if he moved fast enough--

The air moved by his elbow and Spock entered his peripheral vision, his hand reaching out to pinch the guard by the neck, and he fell to the floor in a heap.

"What was that?" Kirk asked. The three of them looked between each other, but nobody answered his question, and Spock turned towards the doorway that led out of the brig.

"Now that we have escaped, it is imperative that we acquire weapons, a means of communication with the _Enterprise_ , and access to the transporter," Spock said.

"Nobody's going to answer me, huh?" Kirk pushed past all of them to start towards the door. "I saw some weapons stockpiled in the security room just outside here, if we could get some of those--"

"Without being shot," McCoy interjected.

“Yeah, without that.” The doors slid open and Kirk poked his head out into the hallway while the rest of them hung back. "Then we might be able to capture their commander, bring her back to the _Enterprise_ and hold them for 'Fleet Intelligence, what d'you say?"

"It's crazy," said McCoy.

"It does have several elements of insanity," Spock added, "yet my plans are similiar."

"Great!" Kirk looked over. "What about you, Sybok?"

Sybok smiled. "Sounds great." It was fucking insane, but that wasn’t new to him.

  
Keeping quiet turned out to be equivalent to stunning or pinching everyone they accidentally ran into in the hallways. They tried to hide the bodies as best they could in cabins, closets, or in less-bright corners of hallways. It was the worst clean up he had seen (not that he had seen that many, really, he hadn't), worsened by the fact that none of the soldiers would concede where their commander was—until Sybok did what none of them would ask.

The man had been half-conscious on the floor, eyes wide when Sybok kneeled over him. It was easy, quick, and reprehensible: his fingers pressed against skin, his mind pressed against similar thoughts, and he ripped the information from its roots to leave the man unconscious on the floor.

"She's in the office on the deck above us," Sybok said, flexing his fingers. He looked over at Spock, who seemed unaffected by what he had done, despite being the only one present who actually understood it. "Two sets of guards, one of the lift and another before the door."

"Right." Kirk elbowed the console next to the turbolift. The doors slid open after a few moments. They all piled in—McCoy tense, Spock calm, Kirk bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. When the elevator doors opened, they all stepped out into the hallway and into a firefight. Cover only came with the corners of intersections, Kirk and McCoy at one and Spock and Sybok on the other. When those two guards were taken out, they pressed forward—but Sybok hung back.

"I'll go around," he told them, "See if they have more waiting for you." He took off down the other corridor, and while he heard Kirk's yell, he didn't hear footsteps coming after him, and soon it was just him, the empty corridor, and his knowledge of the commander's true location.

He walked—jogged—until the corridor matched the soldier's memory and he came to a door that looked like any other on either side of the corridor, and Sybok knocked the back of his knuckles against the metal. Yet another guard met him at the door when it slid open, and Sybok stunned him and walked around his unconscious body towards the desk at the other end of the room. The commander had a phaser out, too, and she stood, pointing it at him.

Sybok smiled. "It seems we’re at a stalemate."

"How did you find this room?" she asked, stepping around the desk. For every move she made towards him, Sybok tried to keep the distance between them.

"You tell your subordinates too much. All I had to do was pluck it out of his mind. No shields."

"Mind rape."

"Do they even know of it on Romulus? I heard the Sundered were not the most gifted of our ancestors."

"We remember our history, Vulcan, and the legends they told us." She reached to the side of the phaser and adjusted a dial there, but her gaze never wavered. "If you have not come with your companions, there must be something you want for yourself."

"Perceptive." Sybok inclined his head. "First, I want you to allow the others to return to the _Enterprise_ , then we can leave this planet, and you can let me see your engines."

"Interesting demands." The commander sat on the edge of the desk. "Why should I release them? Or permit you to see my engines? You are practically asking for control over my ship."

"Because we both know that you're not going to get anything from them—not the _Enterprise_ , not the planet, no information. On top of that, the longer you wait the sooner the fleet's going to come out of warp right above you, and if you had more ships for the fight they would already be here. For the sake of your fleet, you should cut your losses and run." He was tempted to add _And you've hit Gault as hard as you need to_ , but he decided against it; it would expose too much of him, and that was the last thing he wanted to do while he could see the photon-charged end of a phaser.

"And what would we gain through you?" she asked.

"If you hadn't noticed, I'm a Starfleet Officer." So what was a little embellishment in the line of duty? "And a Vulcan, no less. Your Intelligence division would love to question me."

"Yet they have managed without your input. I don't think it's worth my ship."

"That's one opinion." The door opened and the trio rushed in, led by Spock. Sybok glanced over, noted Spock's tight grip on his phaser, and then turned his attention back to the commander. "How'd you know?" he asked Spock.

"You are not the only Vulcan capable of extracting information." Sybok snorted at that—he didn't really believe that Spock would do it, but it pleased him (even though it shouldn't have, if he were half the big brother he was supposed to be).

"Well, madam," Sybok said, "Here is your chance to do something intelligent for your crew—but put your phaser down, first. You're outnumbered."

He watched her hesitate, look to him and the others, before she set the phaser down on the desk. "Very well—I will allow you to return to the planet." She seemed so calm, almost Vulcan-like. "If we'll proceed to the transporter room."

The rest of them stepped back to allow her to exit first, and they followed her out towards the transporter. They met few crewmen along the way. The attendant in the room itself was especially startled, pulling his phaser out until the commander raised her hand to order him to surrender it. "Transport these men to the capital," she told him.

"Wait," Kirk stepped up, his phaser always pointed at the commander. "She's coming with us. We're not getting lost in the process."

The commander had a little quirk of a smile, and she nodded once. She and the trio stepped up onto the pad, though Sybok hung back. Spock turned before the last step and looked back at him as if to question why, but then the commander barked something in Romulan.

Spock reached out to pinch the commander at the shoulder while Sybok turned to stun the attendant who had raised his phaser again. Kirk and McCoy blinked at them from the transporter pad.

"The fuck was that?" Kirk gestured to the commander on the floor.

"She was ordering the destruction of the capital once we had arrived there," Spock explained and looked over to Kirk. "I prevented her from completing the order."

"I can see that." Kirk looked over to the console; the attendant was slumped over the controls. "But now we don't have any way to operate the controls, unless, Sybok…?" He gave a vague gesture.

Sybok glanced at Spock, then stepped over to the slumped man. He reached out to touch the side of his face and searched through memories and habits. When he pulled his hand away, fatigue lingered at the edges of his concentration, but he ignored it for now, and pushed the attendant to the floor. "This panel is pretty easy to use—you three take the pad and I'll beam you into the city park."

"Does it have a time-delay function?" Spock asked.

"It does, but it looks--" Sybok prodded at the broken lever the attendant had fallen on, “—tempermental.”

"Then how will you join us, _sa-kai_?"

Sybok smiled. "I have my methods." He tried to reassure Spock, but he looked unconvinced, going so far as to step off the transport pad onto the floor proper.

"Jim, Leonard," Spock began, "You will return to the _Enterprise_ to ensure the safety of the colony."

"What?" Kirk stepped forward, too. "No, Spock, I'm not leaving anyone behind on this ship.”

“We will not be left behind,” Spock corrected him. “Our arrival will simply be delayed pending further discussion.”

Kirk looked between Spock and Sybok, sighed, and hopped back onto the padd. “Fine, but don’t take too long.”

“And I don’t want to put anyone back together, y’hear, Mister Rare Blood Type?” McCoy jabbed a finger in Spock’s direction. Sybok could see the concern in his eyes and the tension in his shoulders.

“Duly noted.” Spock nodded, and stepped closer to the console. Sybok flipped some switches and adjusted the dials as his borrowed habits dictated, and finally pulled the lever slowly from top to bottom. The images of Kirk and McCoy hazed over with gold particles (what kind of transporter was this?), flickered with a whine of the machine, and then they disappeared altogether.

Sybok didn't speak first, so Spock did. “We should procure a shuttle.”

“We should,” Sybok agreed, and they left the transporter room to begin slinking-rushing-running down the corridors.

"You want this ship," Spock said when they were in the turbolift.

"It's a nice tin can."

"The aesthetics are irrelevant; you want it for your warp project. You desire to replicate it with these engines, despite knowing little if anything about their construction or warp field mechanics." After they ran out into another corridor, Spock paused before an intersection, waited, and then shot his arm to clothesline a Romulan that tried to run past.

Sybok jumped over the body, and they kept running. "And you're saying it like that would be perpetually unknown." Another crewman came around the corner, and Sybok brought his fist across the man’s face to neutralize the threat. They were out of sight before he could slump against the wall.

"Do you dislike the method or the goal? I've accepted that I can't experiment with the _Enterprise_ , but I'm not going to let my idea wither on the vine when there are opportunities to be captured.” They stopped to look both ways at an intersection, and then ran into the shuttle bay. “What could be better than this ship? It's not even supposed to be in this part of the galaxy, and the Romulans wouldn't send something over the Neutral Zone that they couldn't afford to lose."

"It still constitutes unnecessary risk." Sybok could detect something almost angry in Spock's voice, not the unwavering calm with which he had talked to Kirk and McCoy moments before. "Your plan also implies that you will adopt another vagrant lifestyle more criminal than before, only for the purpose of chasing solutions that are less efficient than legal alternatives. This is illogical, even for you, _sa-kai_."

Sybok couldn't stifle a laugh. "Alternatives? Where else am I going to find a free starship?" They slowed as they came to a shuttle at the far end of the bay.

"You could discuss your plans with Father." Spock tapped at the door, and it hissed open. They climbed into it.

Sybok laughed, following Spock in. "He wouldn't—"

"You have never asked," Spock interrupted, stopping and turning to face him. "And I know that you have yet to communicate with him since that time."

Sybok cringed slightly at the memory of his last conversation with his father, not the note he had sent with the aide but the yelling (one sided, his own voice, Sarek hadn't yelled but deconstructed), followed by the fight, realizing for the first time how strong Sarek really was—physically, psionically, politically, emotionally. The fringes of that memory hurt as well: Amanda pushing Spock back into the house, though Sybok knew he would have found a place to watch, either from the window or behind the corner of the house or—

"You don't understand, Spock." Sybok sat in one of the copilot seats at the front, though he didn’t exactly know what to do with any of these controls. "Do you think I can just prostrate myself in front of him and he'll forgive what I've done? Do you think, after you've told him what's happened on this ship, he'll be any more willing to call me his son?" Sybok knew Sarek could no more accept him than Sybok could change the man that he was, and that anger—Sarek would change him, pluck every free thought of his head until he was a repressed little robot like the rest of them.

"He may," Spock said, sitting down in the chair next to him, and Sybok stared at him—disbelief, maybe questioning whether Spock had melded correctly when he had extracted information earlier. Spock continued despite his look, "The possibility still remains unexplored, and if it does not yield any progress, I will fund your project myself."

Sybok snorted. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

"Do not make assumptions about the extent of my influence," Spock retorted while he began pushing at buttons and pulling at levers on the console; the shuttle hummed to life. "I will help you, _sa-kai_."

Something more hung in Spock's words that made Sybok feel guilty, and not for the first time he wondered why he was here. He had gone to Earth to see Spock, had lobbied and aimed for the _Enterprise_ to help him, had tried to give him whatever knowledge he could (that Spock wanted) so Spock could weather whatever the universe threw at him. Everything else had been a distraction to that. The shuttle lifted off the ground just barely, and they faced the closed bay doors.

Sybok tested the idea of leaving now that he was faced with it—if he wanted to put Spock on that transporter pad nothing would stop him—but Spock had that look in his eyes like a kicked puppy, and Sybok just…couldn't. He sighed and reached out to ruffle Spock's hair a little, and Spock let him without so much as a frown.

He was so fucking close, but now Spock was shooting through the doors and pulling out of the ship, and he could see the stars out there and Gault below them. His hand clenched at his side.

"Fine," he said quietly, folding his arms over his chest. Sybok slumped in the chair, looking out the window towards the planet. “Aim for that city on the coast.”

They had to avoid a few phaser blasts on the way down, from both sides, but eventually they came down just outside the city in a suburb that was already smoldering. They landed on a black gash that went north and south through a row of houses. Sybok saw emergency vehicles up the street when they jumped out, but nobody seemed to pay them any mind after they saw their uniforms.

"This is the city?" Spock asked from beside him, and Sybok squinted at the skyscrapers in the distance through the columns of dark smoke. The angles were wrong but the points were familiar—the government building with the golden spire on the left, the agricultural research cube on the right.

A red beam shot down from the sky, strafing the city from end to end, and a new set of smoke columns began billowing towards the sky. "So much for intercepting the attack," Sybok muttered, beginning to run in that direction, but then he stopped.

Some firemen began piling into a floating red-white truck, the hum of the engines already growing over the roar of turmoil. "Come on," Sybok grabbed Spock's arm, "we can make it."

Nothing felt as exhilarating as riding on the back of a fire-hover going eighty kilometers an hour around city streets. When he hopped off, Spock followed him into the chaos of burned buildings and debris. For a moment, he didn't know why he was doing it, and any gratitude for what Gault had given to him was illogical—but that was what made it feel so natural, so he didn't question it further.

After he had seen a starship disintegrate through the atmosphere and another couple of hours, McCoy and Christine joined them, followed soon after by Kirk and Nyota. For all their technology, nothing replaced the human element in their work: a regenerator didn't bring the same comfort as a touch and a talk, especially his "talks." Sybok lost track of how much pain he had eased, and only returned to the _Enterprise_ when Christine caught him napping by one of the supply vehicles.

He had a shower in sickbay to get the smoke and chemicals off his skin, then got a burn on his arm fixed, and finally replicated a new undershirt and trousers to replace the sooty, bloody mess of his clothes. He asked one of the nurses if he could borrow a bed for a short nap, and they waved off towards McCoy's office. Sybok found a comfy couch there, stretched out, and passed out. He hated migraines.


	6. August '62 - September '63

When he woke up, really blossomed into consciousness so he could see and feel and hear again, Spock was sitting at his bedside (when had he moved to a bed?), tapping leisurely at a padd in his lap. Sybok watched him, not saying a word, until Spock glanced up, caught his eye, and then set the stylus down. "You have recovered consciousness, sa-kai?"

Sybok cast a glance over himself, noting the IV sticking into his arm, the medical tunic he wore, and hearing the low, thrumming beat of his own heart from the monitor above. He gave Spock a small smile. "…apparently." His throat felt dry and rough.

Spock moved his chair closer. "You have been unconscious for nine days, despite suffering little physical injury." There was tightness in his jaw that suggested a frown was being held back, something to match the narrowed state of his brows and the concern in his eyes. All subtle around the edges, but so close, how could Sybok miss them?

"Nine days?" Sybok tried to sit up a little more, but his arms felt weak and even little movements up and down made his head feel dizzy. It was all eerily familiar, but to what, he wasn't sure. "Since—Gault?"

"Yes." Spock began tapping at the padd again, and then held it and the padd for Sybok to take. "Doctor McCoy asked me to conduct some diagnostic tests when you awoke."

With a weak grip, Sybok managed to bring it to his lap, and he saw a blank white canvas with square swatches on the side. "You want me to paint you a picture?"

"No." Spock moved his chair again so that it was more adjacent to the bed and he could get a better look over Sybok's left arm. "Please write your full name."

His full name was still only his first name, Sybok recalled distantly. He took the stylus into his left hand and began scribbling out basic Vulcan script against the digital easel. The characters were slow to recall, mixing up the loops and spirals more than once before he finally got to the end of the last letter. Sybok sighed, and then looked over to Spock. "How's that?"

Spock glanced from the padd to Sybok's face and back, his head tilted slightly. "You have written it with your left hand."

Sybok blinked and looked down at his left hand, still clumsily grasping the pen. "…Yes, I think I did."

"You are normally right-handed."

"Am I?" Sybok asked, and Spock nodded. "That's…strange."

"Indeed." Spock stood from his chair. "I shall retrieve Leonard."

"What? Oh—" Sybok blinked and Spock was already out the door. "…okay." He leaned his head back against the pillows, staring up at the white lights as he listened to the thrum of the biobed. A few minutes passed before Spock returned to the room, followed by McCoy.

"Well, nice of you to join us again, Sybok." McCoy said, looking over him before looking at the readout above the bed. "Should've seen Spock here when we thought we had a dead Vulcan on our hands."

Spock folded his hands behind his back, looking stern and professional at the foot of the bed. "As you still maintained life signs, I suggested that you had entered a healing trance in the aftermath of the recovery efforts."

"Oh." Sybok rubbed the side of his head. The migraine he remembered was gone. "Probably, but I feel great now, so if I could go back to my quarters—" He still had a bed on this ship, right?

"Hold on." McCoy raised a hand, and Sybok slumped back against the pillows. "We've got to make sure your mind's stable."

Sybok had never endured so many scans and tests since he had been severed. Yet he preferred the comforting presence of Spock, McCoy, and towards the end, Christine, rather than the false smiles of faceless doctors and nurses who were treating him simply on the orders of others. The tests didn't show any lingering damage, so McCoy let him go. Spock escorted him back to his cabin, but they walked in silence for most of the trip. Memories of what had transpired before became clearer, gave him a footing in time.

Finally, Sybok asked, "Are we at war?"

"Yes."

"Ah." Sybok leaned against the turbolift wall while it traveled (why was he still tired, if he had slept so long?), and they were silent again until they came to Sybok's cabin. It was empty; his roommate probably had work. He sat down on the bed with a sigh, and Spock lingered by the room divider.

Sybok looked up to him, and smiled. "Can you do me a favour, Spock?"

Spock didn't move from his spot. "Possibly."

Not a yes, but Sybok would work with it. He extended his hand towards Spock, showing his open palm towards him. "Come closer, and let me try to feel your thoughts. I'm not going to do anything." Spock hesitated, but he stepped closer to stand right in front of Sybok, whose hand hovered near his face, holding still before dropping down to his lap. "…I figured. You can sit down, if you want."

"Your conclusions?" Spock sat down on the bed next to him.

"I used my talents too much." Sybok flexed his hand, and then flopped back onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling. "I don't remember how many minds I touched during that—battle? Rescue effort?" His hand scrubbed over his face. His mother had warned him about this so long ago, when she had first shown him the technique and identified his unique ability to do it outside a contact meld. "And now my mind is going to be weak indefinitely."

"Your empathy," Spock corrected.

"Same difference." An inhale, and then a long sigh—the more he thought about it the more he felt as if he'd had a limb removed and its was return questionable. So he tried to think of other things, but it anything that was related felt just as uncomfortable to consider. "This happened before."

A beat of silence as Spock sat still, until he finally looked over his shoulder to look down at Sybok. "In the Hall?"

"The entire thing," Sybok moved his hand in a circle. "When I eliminated the Watcher—that's one mind but I'd say he counts as five, at least—and then when I was finally in the Hall, I had to check ten arks at least until I found Mother. At the estate, you saw the fight, but none of it affected Sarek, of course." He rubbed at his temple. "It was exhausting."

"If I recall, you also disabled several arresting officers in your delirium."

"Really? I don't remember that." But it didn't surprise him. His memory jumped from being held face-first in the sand by Sarek to a cushioned cell in the northern plains of Vulcan. He wouldn't have let them take him that far if he had the chance, but now he had finally settled on why he didn't. "…you have any plans after this?"

"Not at present."

"Good." Sybok sat up again. "Let's play some kal-toh." That game was better than any diagnostic test that McCoy could give him, and the fact he just barley lost to Spock gave him confidence for recovery.

\--

He was recovering every day—a little more feeling, a little more awareness, but he still felt closed off from the world. Not that he had any time to dwell on it.

Sybok had never truly been in the middle of any cross-planet war before. When he saw hints of conflict before, he'd take the next ship out of that system. Yet now he was at the forefront of its complexity and overall unpleasantness, either in the reports, the conversations he had, or what he heard from Christine. The Enterprise was one of the most capable (destructive) ships in the fleet, but she wasn't invincible, and if something was going to overload and blow, it was probably going to be a plasma conduit next to some young and once-handsome ensign.

He could tell the moods of the core, had memorized the sounds of it groaning and roaring, but they didn't frighten him. He preferred it blowing and taking the whole ship in one ball of high-energy particulate than the slow leak and radioactive burn possible elsewhere in Engineering.

Then came the third week of September and the end of a personal decade, and Sybok decided he needed a break from the tension of survival mode. He wandered over to Spock's office right at alpha shift end, walked right past the yeoman and the pocket doors to find Spock sitting at his desk, studious as always. Spock glanced up.

Sybok leaned against the doorway. "Come on, I want to bake a pie."

"This is irrelevant to me," Spock answered.

"I want to bake a pie with you. I'll let you choose the flavour. Let's go."

Spock stared at him for a long moment, and then began putting away his padds and locking up the console on his desk. "You are using the Standard calendar, then."

Sybok grinned. "What other calendar would I use? Vulcan isn't revolving around Nevasa anymore."

"Then you will forgive me if I missed the significance of this date," Spock said, coming around the desk. He tugged at the front of his shirt briefly. When he came close, Sybok slung an arm around his shoulders and gave him a little squeeze, and then walked out with him.

"Don't worry about it, Spock. Forty isn't that important, and birthdays are illogical."

 

He had checked the schedule—Isaura and others would only be there in the next hour or two, with easier things on the menu for tonight's dinner—so when they came in on Sybok's clearance, the kitchen was empty and the tables were spotless. "When was the last time you went to the galley?" Sybok asked, first walking to the sink to thoroughly clean his hands. The rough grit of the soap felt familiar and comforting.

"Inspection with my first captain, twenty-two-fifty-eight," Spock said from the table, scrolling through a padd he had grabbed off the wall. "My presence here has not been necessary since. Will pecan pie suffice?"

"Depends which recipe you've picked." Sybok walked over, setting the dish on the table. "Oh, that'll work. Why don't you replicate the ingredients for the crust, and I'll get what we need for the filling. Don't forget to wash your hands."

 

The pie was in the oven and would be out in approximately fifty minutes. In the meantime, Sybok cleaned up the work area and cut up some apples for them to munch on. Spock watched the cutting intently. "…Spock, I'm not going to slice my own fingers off."

"There always remains the possibility."

Sybok smiled, and just continued slicing. After he was done, the slices were arranged on a plate and they picked at the apples with a fork (and in Spock's case, married each wedge with caramel sauce). "So," Sybok began, turning the fork between his fingers. "I never found the chance to ask you about your relationships."

"You did ask me about Nyota's jewelry."

"True, I did. But that's not the only relationship you're involved with." Sybok popped another apple slice into his mouth and waited for Spock to venture his first piece of information.

"…that is true," Spock admitted, almost reluctant (but really, if he thought he was hiding anything, Sybok would tell him otherwise). "I admire Leonard and Jim for their unique traits, as well as their qualities when they are together."

"You looked like you were doing more than admiring earlier this year."

A slow breath. "Jim is a very sensual being," Spock said.

"And McCoy?"

"Likewise, though he utilizes different methods." He seemed determined to maintain that academic distance to the subject, and that wasn't what Sybok was looking for.

"Do you love them? Like Nyota?" If he were another Vulcan he might pull t'hy'la into the conversation, but the word was so old and individual. Sybok had studied the different ways it was used, from history to present, and had called Spock his t'hy'la in the past—they were blood brothers, after all—but it wasn't the same as Spock had with Nyota, possibly with the other two.

Spock ate another apple slice himself before he prepared to answer. "…I am uncertain." He stood and put some space between them, walking to the other side of the table.

Sybok arched an eyebrow. "About what, exactly?"

"Whether it is possible to maintain these relationships simultaneously," Spock began to pace, "the legal and political consequences we would have to endure, the—"

"Spock." Spock didn't stop pacing, so Sybok got up as well to join him on that side, "Spock." He stopped and looked up to Sybok, and then down towards the remaining apple slices. "I know you think I can be insane, but—listen to me? First of all, love isn't finite, and it isn't logical, so don't analyze it like you normally would. You'll know if you do—you'll feel it.

"Politically, all you have to do is have Sarek approve, and the rest of them will fall in line." At least for the Vulcans—Sybok didn't know how Starfleet would take it. "Legally, well—this is a federation, I'm sure you'll find a planet that allows polyamorous marriages. You only need one." Sybok grinned.

"And the marriage bond?"

"The mind is a wondrous thing." Sybok tapped his temple. "We've already talked about that. You'll be fine, okay?" Spock nodded. "Good, now do you want more fruit? I can prepare you a grapefruit crème brulee while we wait."

"That would be acceptable."

\--

October and November passed in a flurry of conflict, so random and time consuming that the recreational department couldn't hold their semi-annual poker tournament because people spent their time recovering or working Kirk and Spock's time was eaten up by this meeting and that communication, inside and outside their regular shifts, whenever the Romulans felt like staging an offensive. Sybok began to see the toll it took on the two of them, in the way Kirk loss a little bit of his joviality and Spock spent less time on free projects and more with Nyota, always close to her side.

It started to affect him, too. He saw Christine more out of circumstance than choice: pulling an injured crewmate into sickbay or meeting her in Engineering. His empathy picked up on the suffering and the tension regardless if he still wasn't quite healed, and Sybok was reluctant to screen it completely when he still had the opportunity to help. Sometimes he did (and he'd feel emotionally deaf the next day), and others he had to forfeit to modern technology.

He remembered why he had been a horrible criminal in his first independent years. Inserting a little disorder and passion into Vulcan society was all well and fun, but to be surrounded by pain and suffering, neither of which he could prevent through any means, was frustrating and caustic.

His meditation periods became longer and more frequent. He wondered how long this war would last, how much longer the Enterprise would have to be on the offensive. It would be a good question to ask Spock, but his brother already had so many questions to answer in his day...

And sometimes, when he fell deep into his meditation, Sybok felt the tug towards the center of the stars again. A part of him still loathed giving up the opportunity, but he still had Spock, Christine, the rest of the Enterprise, and that was ultimately better than any lone, suicidal trial he had had in mind.

December came around with the distinct feeling that it would be the last Christmas of the mission, but also the most subdued of them all. Decorations were sparse, they only put up one tree, but Sybok ensured that all the regular treats would get out to the tables with a bonus gift (that he decided on one night when he couldn't sleep) of a cookie and fudge ensemble for everyone on the ship. Possibly wrapped with red and green ribbon (Isaura's suggestion), because who really needed to sleep, anyway?

So when all the gifts had been delivered and all the savory dishes had been laid out for the crew to eat, Sybok found a nice corner of a couch and sank into it, ready to doze off before someone could burn the second-round goose. He was actually enjoying the catchy little holiday music, drifting in one ear and out the other, when someone nudged his knee, and then sat down next to him. "You look tired." Christine.

Sybok opened his eyes to look over to her and smiled. "Maybe I am—happens every holiday season." He leaned over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He didn't know why, but it felt comfortable, she wasn't shrugging him away, and this was the time for holiday love and all that traditional propaganda. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, tired like you," Christine sighed, leaning into him. "And maybe a little overworked. It's strange, you know, I swear I keep seeing the same people all the time, with the same burns. If they'd just listen..."

"A few more battles and they'll get it." Sybok chuckled. "I don't have to break something to visit, do I?"

"Not at all," Christine said, and Sybok could feel that she was smiling, the emotion spiking through their calm enough for him to discern. "You come whenever you like, Sybok, though some of the others might appreciate more cookies."

"I'll keep that in mind." Though he wasn't going to baking for a while after the season, nothing changing there. He let out a slow breath, relaxing there with her while he cast a look around the room. Holiday games, dancing, lots of eating—he spotted Spock and company doing some lewd things with chocolate fudge and the maltballs as far as Vulcan dignity and fingers were concerned, but Spock managed to get three glasses of cider and redirection to socialize among the couches.

Eventually, they came to Sybok and Christine, and Nyota and she talked while Spock and McCoy argued about the romance of mistletoe ("It is a technically parasite, Leonard, why you would want to kiss me--" "It's symbolic."). Sybok just leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. The ship was patrolling through the not-so-Neutral Zone, this peace could break at any moment—and yet, he wouldn't be anywhere else.

\--

Kirk turned thirty soon after in January, and Sybok sent him and Spock (thirty-three) a cake—cheesecake, actually, with strawberries on top. He didn't hear about any other celebrations until more than a week later, when he overheard a conversation from guys in Operations talking about a broken king-sized bed and how "it doesn't fit in the fucking turbolift."

He really, truly didn't need to know that.

First, he made Operations a surprise set of a dozen lemon-poppyseed cupcakes, and then he asked Christine if she wanted to have some milkshakes. She said yes (on the condition he would stick to vanilla).

\--

The action lulled in February, and while everything took a breath and a moment to relax, Spock didn't—he stayed tense and tired, and when Sybok found him in the observation lounge, he was still working over a PADD.

"You can't work all the time," Sybok said, looking over Spock's shoulder. Spock jumped and nearly dropped the PADD, which was enough for Sybok to lean over and pluck it from his grasp. Spock stuck one hand out to receive it back, but Sybok didn't. "You kept it balanced before," He moved around to sit on the couch next to him. "What's changed?"

"I have accepted additional responsibilities. Please return that, sa-kai." Spock frowned, and Sybok continued to hold it away on his far side.

"What responsibilities?"

"Colony defense," Spock said.

Sybok blinked. "For which colony?"

"Ours, Natara." Spock held his hand out and waited for Sybok to give the PADD back; he hesitated, but he did pass it back over. "Father asked for an additional opinion regarding the system's defense network."

"…and?" Sybok turned in his seat to face him.

"They are not adapting to Romulan tactics—either from lack of information or tradition. They have yet to be attacked, but considering attacks within their sector, I believe it is inevitable."

Sybok glanced down to the PADD in Spock's lap and saw the star chart open across the screen: dots on a three dimensional grid, clustered in traditional Vulcan Defense Fleet formations. He knew they would hang on to what they had, but he hoped for their sake that clinging to the past wouldn't lead to their demise. "Why don't you let me review what they have, and your recommendations?" Sybok offered. "You may have missed something."

Spock glanced from him to the PADD and back again, and then slowly pushed it over to him. "Very well. Do not overwrite any documents."

"I won't." Sybok took the PADD and began to review the files—star charts, fleet movements, ship listings. They still had some ships left over from Vulcan's destruction to pair with the glut of new ships, but their problem, to Sybok, appeared to be personnel. Just Vulcans on those ships, like it had always been. "Spock, what do you think—" He looked over. Spock was asleep, his head leaned back against the back of the couch. Sybok reviewed the documents for a little while longer.

\--

That evening wasn't the last time he looked at those VDF documents. He talked to Spock more about the incoming news pertinent to the colony's security, and Spock was too busy trying to orchestrate something with Kirk and the rest of the fleet to question the source of his curiosity.

This message—message-to-be—had been weighing on his mind for weeks, until finally, after a long dinner and lounging about watching Kirk show his tactical prowess at tri-dimensional chess, he had been able to find and sit down at a private communication console on the administrative decks. The cubicle had been reserved for him in his own name, and there was something cozy about the white study walls and the faded coffee stain at the corner of the desk.

Sybok took a breath, exhaled, sipped from the cup of tea he had brought with him, and then set it down on the table right over that mark. The RECORD button glowed green in the corner of the monitor.

"Selek, I'd like to apologize for not keeping better contact through this mission, but you've been on one of these before; I'm sure you know how distracting it can be. Of course, you'd probably say that apologizing is illogical--Spock always does--but let me indulge in the emotion of it." Sybok made sure to keep his eyes on the center of the screen, but still his eyes threatened to wander to the corners of the monitor and to the cup of tea sitting on the desk.

"I don't know how much Spock has told you about what's happened, but I think you suspected it, didn't you, where I wanted the Enterprise to go? I researched everything about the core, I built the damn amplifier, and I would've connected them—and created history!—if Spock hadn't stopped me. Too much risk—as if flying through a vacuum at warp isn't dangerous." He didn't feel like jeopardizing that, not anymore, but he couldn't deny that his goals still thrive at the back of his mind.

"He knows it'll work, and he says he still wants to help me build an amplified core, and I believe him." Sybok reached over to take a sip of his tea, and then set the glass down again. "I thought I would do something for him first, though. Those Defense Fleet problems Sarek keeps sending him—he doesn't need more logistics to worry about. He really fucking doesn't.

"You're not obligated to give me any information—it's probably classified, isn't it?—but it would be illogical to keep someone who can assist the colony unaware of the situation. I can contribute something. I'm in Starfleet, after all." And he could have hated Selek for planting that seed in the first place, manipulating him onto this ship instead of—what? He'd have to ask, some day.

Sybok paused and searched for anything else to say. Finding nothing, he gave the screen a small smile. "That's everything for now. Good luck with your work, old man." Whatever he did on the colony. Sybok realized, not for the first time, how little he knew about the workings of the colony. He wondered if the message would even get through.

Five days later, he received a reply with files attached. He had a new project.

\--

In April, the Enterprise participated in a maneuver that successfully destroyed an entire fleet of warbirds, but it took three days more of evasive action and planet-shadowing than anticipated. Kirk wolfed down a bagel before he finally took care of his sleep deprivation, McCoy pointed a hypo with filled with a soporific at more than a few individuals, and Spock was cranky without anyone but Sybok realizing it, making sure everything was in order before he finally retired (with Nyota).

For Sybok, he tried to flush the tang of battle from his mind before he went to sleep. He didn't dream, so he counted it as a success.

\--

He didn't know what he had with Christine. They weren't exactly in a relationship, not in the conventional sense or anything he had experienced before, but they were more than just friends. They both knew what holding hands meant in the Vulcan culture, and while Sybok prescribed to it as it suited him on the outside, the gesture still affected him with its eroticism. The touch comforted him, too, in a way--the brush of fingertips and the warmth of her hand against the chill of the room, not to mention their general surroundings: maybe an evening talking in the observation lounge, maybe a walk around the arboretum. Between the skirmishes and the tolls of their jobs they carved out a small niche of calm company, and while Sybok enjoyed it he had the latent feeling that the idyllic scene wouldn't last too much longer. Maybe until the end of the mission, if they were lucky.

They both seemed to know it, so neither of them talked too much about the future, always preferring the ups and downs of the present. Neither did Sybok want to push the relationship too far--for her, mostly. His own preferences for relationships had changed since T'Leris died, and while he didn't eliminate the possibility of something like that again, he didn't believe he was quite settled enough, yet. He still didn't have any place to stay after the Enterprise completed its mission, though he was certain that Spock would still offer him some shelter.

"Christine," he brought up the subject while they sat beneath a cherry tree, just blossoming under the full-spectrum lamps overhead. Sybok felt like painting, so he had his kit out. "Do you--intend to stay on the Enterprise? For its next mission?"

"I don't know," she answered, picking up one of the fallen blossoms off the ground, examining it in her palm. "I was thinking about it, and I might. This sickbay is familiar to me, and if I stay, I'm guaranteed head nurse again...but I was hoping to return to the Medical Academy to finish my degree."

"To become a CMO?" Sybok asked. He brushed off a blossom that had fallen onto his sketchpad, and then another one that had fallen onto his pastels. They felt different in his hand (had he really been right-handed?).

"Not—it would be nice to have the option, but I'm not looking for the job yet."

"So you intend to stay in Starfleet."

"Oh, yes. Don't you think leaving now would be a little irresponsible? I've had more patients in the last year than the previous four, and with this war…it's not the best time to leave." She looked over at him. "Were you thinking of leaving? I know you're not obligated to stay…"

She was right; he wasn't an officer. He had signed up for this mission on this ship and nothing else. If he really wanted he could go back and get a job on Mars again—he almost snorted at the idea. Could he really adapt back to that sort of regimented manual labour, after all this? "I was thinking of going to the Vulcan colony for a while, actually." He looked back at her to see her surprise, and then looked back to the sketchpad. "Maybe as a defense contractor, give them a new perspective on their tactics; something along those lines...it can't be involved in the war like Gault was, when they're still rebuilding their civilization."

"Then they probably need you more than Starfleet." Christine dropped the blossom from her palm back down onto the grass, and brushed some pollen off of her knee. "You should help them."

Sybok reached over to place a hand over hers. "I'll write, if you want."

"You don't have to; we'll both be busy…" Christine brought her other hand to lie on top of his, and the dual touch flooded his mind with welcome thoughts—calmstrongnotlikeRoger—but his focus held on her smile. "But I'd like if you did."

Whoever Roger was, Sybok was at least grateful he was the one here, that he was the one pulling her close for a hug at his side, and not this mystery man.

\--

The lights of the observation lounge were dim, and there were few people draped over various soft couches and chairs seemed to be quietly isolated from each other. Spock sat on a couch on the far side of the room, right up against the window with his gaze towards the slow-moving stars. Sybok walked over from the turbolift, and took a seat on the couch next to him. "Evening, Spock." Reflecting back to when they had met almost five years ago, Spock looked older, more refined and yet more relaxed, capable of a powerful silence and even more powerful words. Sybok might also be intimidated, if he didn't know Spock from his most vulnerable years.

"Good evening." Spock's gaze held a moment longer on space, and then he turned his full attention to Sybok. "Did you need something, sa-kai?"

"No, not really…but I wanted to talk to you about my plans after this." He leaned back, also looking towards the stars. Out towards the center…his heart ached before he dismissed those thoughts out of his mind.

Spock remained silent for a long pause, then, "…do you intend to stay in Starfleet?"

"No." Sybok saw Spock's brow start to furrow and his mouth begin to open in protest, so he carried on. "I think I've served my purpose here. You're still going to continue, correct, and you're not afraid of your captain anymore?"

Spock's fingers interlaced in his lap. "Only on a rare occasion. Yet if you are not in Starfleet, where do you intend to go? Will you become a vagabond again?"

Sybok let a small, tight smile pull at the corner of his mouth. "I don't think that's necessary. I think I'll find some use for my experience on the colony."

"Natara."

"Yes. What's your opinion—would Jim give me a recommendation for my visa?" Sybok stretched out an arm along the back of the couch.

"Considering your performance during times of crisis, I believe he would. Yet, will it be enough to convince the Immigration Council?" Spock's brows came together again, just a hint.

"We'll see." Sybok knew it would be enough, because those weren't the only things working in his favour. Selek would talk to their father and the council members. Speaking of… "Are you sure Sarek's still amenable to seeing me? Possibly not vetoing my application?"

"He would not have asked about your progress all this time if he were not concerned for your well-being." Spock reached over to the side table to take a sip of tea, and then set the cup down again. "You may have more success if you earn the favour of Number One beforehand."

"Number One?" Sybok arched an eyebrow. "Is that another codename for someone I should know?"

Spock looked out towards the window. "She is my former commander. I believe I told you of her cooperation with our father on the colony."

This began to sound familiar, and in more ways than one. "And when you say 'cooperation,' you mean—?"

"The details Father gives me are vague, but he speaks of her in positive terms." Spock folded his arms over his chest. "Therefore, if you acquire her positive opinion, that will most likely transfer to him despite your criminal history."

Sybok laughed. "Thanks for the advice."

Spock was brooding now, probably because this cooperation was on the lines of 'universal translator' cooperation, a story they were both familiar with. Sybok himself didn't care if Sarek was tending towards another woman; it was only a matter of time, he thought, since the man was only ninety-eight. But Spock didn't look like he appreciated the thought, so Sybok planned to keep an eye on the two for him.

The rest of his life after Starfleet already looked interesting, and he hadn't got there yet.

\--

The last month was all about preparation and inspection. Sybok and his colleagues took extra shifts to make sure that the Enteprise was spotless; there wouldn't be a single dusty corner or missing glass on the entire ship. Not one, though Sybok had been tempted.

Once the ship came into spacedock, the elaborate process of moving everyone's belongings down to pre-selected accommodations began. However, even at the end of five years and numerous shopping trips on far out worlds, Sybok had few belongings to carry with him, and he ended up forwarding it all to Spock's new faculty apartment on the campus of Starfleet Academy.

For a few weeks after the end of the mission, it felt like life had returned to its old paces again as it had in 2258. Spock would disappear during the day for work or other engagements, and Sybok was free to roam the city, mingle with its inhabitants, and generally keep himself from being a nuisance. He took some of his credit bonus from the mission-end to peruse some high-end bakeries, sampling cheesecakes for himself and buying chocolate-dipped fruits for Spock (and then seeing how long it would take for them to disappear).

The calm abruptly ended in August when Spock and Nyota decided that in the six months before the Enterprise was set to disembark again, they had to get married in September, the best weather for the area around Mount Kilimanjaro, not too far from Nyota's home town. Organizing all of that kept Sybok entertained, especially when they let him do the cake. The design was simple: multi-tiered chocolate cake with white vanilla frosting, and ancient Vulcan calligraphy wrapping around it in milk chocolate.

"What does it say?" Nyota asked him the day the cake came in, right as he was positioning it on the table before the great window in the reception hall. He could see the mountain cradled by clouds in the distance. "I don't recognize the forms."

"It's an old Vulcan salute wishing security on the new couple, their property, their children, and their ambitions." Sybok said as he edged the stand this way and that, and then stepped back to check how centered it was. Perfect. "Load of nonsense if you ask me, but it looks nice, right?" He beamed, and she rolled her eyes at him.

It was a nice, relaxing wedding reception after the rituals proper (that Sybok politely excused himself from, Spock knew why and Nyota simply understood). A lot of those in attendance were from Starfleet, especially the Enterprise, and after he had shook hands during introductions with numerous in-laws (including a tall, suspicious brother), Sybok went to find Christine, who he had sworn had attended in a nice, red dress—

"Sybok."

He nearly dropped the drink he had been carrying. Instead, he took a sip of the champagne and forced himself to turn around. "A'nirih."

Sarek wore a formal suit, not the same one Sybok remembered from similar gatherings but close. What struck him was both how Sarek had aged in the eighteen years since he had seen him. There was grey in his hair that hadn't been there before, but Sybok didn't feel any more confident in facing them than he had. This man was still stronger than him in every sense of the word. He couldn't feel any stray thoughts beyond Sarek's shields, and the suit betrayed the solidity of his frame.

Forty years old and he still felt like a child against this man, but the indignation didn't feel as hot; Sarek had yet to do anything.

"Are you going back to Natara after this?" Sybok asked. He didn't want to dwell on pleasantries and he doubted Sarek did, either.

Sarek inclined his head. "I intend to, after three days."

"Three days?" Sybok shifted the champagne glass to his other hand. "What else are you doing here? Vacationing? Politicking?" When Sarek reached into the inner fold of his jacket to pull out a folded piece of paper, Sybok tensed—was that really the note he had sent earlier, or—? "If that's an arrest warrant, I'm not accepting it."

"Nor would I expect you to," Sarek said, and held it out for him to accept. Sybok stared at it, uncertain whether to accept it, but he considered the facts: Sarek probably didn't want to draw attention to them, so it couldn't have been that awful, whatever it was. His free hand darted forward to snatch the paper, and he unfolded it right there and then.

"Oh, well." He blinked down at the digital text, reading and rereading it to make sure it wasn't an illusion. "They accepted my application. For a job, too, look at that."

"Indeed." Sarek folded his hands behind his back. "You will also note the dates set for settling your reserved housing."

Sybok brought his other hand over so his little finger could tap at the corner of the page, cycling through the data stored in the paper. "A week? How do they expect me to get there in a week? It takes at least a day to reserve a cruiser seat, not to mention packing and it takes four days to get there…" He glanced up from the paper to Sarek, noting that he had remained as calm as he would always be (and why wouldn't he, he probably knew all the contents of the page). "You knew they would try to sabotage my residency."

"I suspected they would make an attempt."

"And now you want me to beg you for a seat on your cruiser."

"On the contrary, I am offering you passage."

Sybok blinked. Well—that was easier, and possibly the first time (since his last trip with his father, more than nineteen years ago) that he had been offered a free seat. He looked aside and caught a glimpse of Spock with Nyota, Kirk, and McCoy (and the cake), then saw Christine chatting with a group by the buffet. He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. "I'll take your offer," he said after another sip of champagne, "but I don't want to talk about it yet—tomorrow."

"Very well." Sarek seemed to understand, or was at least willing to give him some space, which had Sybok relaxing for the first time in this conversation.

"Evening," he raised his glass to him—sure, not the most Vulcan gesture—but it was polite as he was going to be, and then he walked off for Christine's group, and didn't see how an unfamiliar woman with dark brown hair filled the void he left.

 

Spock and Nyota had a honeymoon planned around four star systems (normally it would be ten, but considering the present conflicts, four seemed best), so the only time that Sybok had a chance to say good-bye was right there at the reception. He waited until the evening had dwindled down and the champagne was all gone before he asked to talk to Spock out on the balcony, in the moonlit shadow of the mountain. "So," he began, "I talked with Sarek earlier."

"I noticed the lack of physical confrontation," Spock remarked.

Sybok quirked an eyebrow, then smiled. "Had some of that chocolate cake, did you?"

"It was intended for my consumption." Spock remained as refined as ever, except for the sass, of course.

"Glad you realized that. Anyway, he gave me the acceptance from the Immigration Council—I'm set to move there in a week." Sybok took out the paper and held it out to Spock, who took it and skimmed over the information.

"That hardly seems adequate time to arrange appropriate travel details," he murmured, tapping through more pages.

"It's not." Sybok leaned his hands against the railing of the balcony. "But Sarek offered a seat on his cruiser, which is leaving in three days and probably goes warp six, seven maybe."

Spock glanced up at him, and then folded the paper in half again, handing it back to him. Sybok stuffed it back into his pocket. "Did you accept?"

"I did, and I'll have to take the shuttle tonight so that I can get back to the apartment in time to pack. I won't get to see you when you come back, but—you'll send me the vids, right? Especially of those waterfalls?"

"I will endeavor to keep a complete visual record of our travels."

"Thanks." Sybok took in a breath and huffed it out; he didn't want to leave just yet, but he knew when the shuttles were leaving and time pressed ever forward. He raised his hand in a salute, fingers parted, "Live long and prosper, Spock."

Spock lifted his hand in the same salute. "Peace and long life, Sybok."

Sybok turned to go, facing the reception hall, but then he stopped. He couldn't say good-bye to his brother like that, so he turned and pulled Spock into a tight bear hug, quick enough to take Spock completely by surprise, which gave him about three seconds of quality squeeze time before Spock pushed at his embrace. Sybok laughed before easing off, and then put his hands on Spock's shoulder. "Thanks for the rest of your help, too. I'll keep the colony safe for you and Nyota in case you want to make me an uncle—why are you blushing? You're married!"

"It's the chocolate content in the cake," Spock excused, and Sybok just laughed, and ruffled his hair.

"I'll see you soon. Don't die out there."


	7. Epilogue (2268)

The view from his office still stuns Sybok: the river, the trees, the sprawling suburb beyond the beltway, the fact he can see the roof of his tiny bachelor pad just over the hill if he stands on a chair (or goes to a higher floor in the building).

The rest of Natara is beautiful, untouched wilderness. The coast is made of pink, sandy beaches with no footprints, and the forests have trees old enough to almost have their own minds. Sybok has hiked to the tallest mountain in a fifty mile radius of the city, and at the top the wind feels just like Seleya, caressing over his cheek like his mother's hand. He may have had a moment there—but there was no one around for miles, no one to feel him when his shields were down and his emotions were free.

When he's not exploring, he's working.

It's nearly disgusting how routine his life has become. He wakes up, feeds his meat-eating guppy in a bowl, pulls on his dark-green, form-fitting Vulcan Defense Force uniform, takes his cycle to HQ, and doesn't leave until the sun's gone down six or seven hours later, depending on the time of year. Sometimes he'll park in a different spot, just to be spontaneous and ruin someone's day, but still. It's mundane and predictable and Sybok doesn't know whether he's fallen or ascended since the day he set foot here.

He likes his office, as hideously boring as that sounds. It's spacious and all his furniture is custom-ordered comfy; he's taken a nap across the couch once or twice or thirty times. Sybok calls it his victory couch. Not only because he fought to have it and for the room it's in, but because he tells his secretary (and his superiors) that the more time he spends there, the longer the colony will be safe from Romulan ships.

Except he doesn't think that excuse will work anymore, since the communiqué in his hands says "ROMULUS SURRENDERS" right next to a picture of Spock and his harem (Sybok can't call them anything else as a group, but at least he doesn't say it aloud) standing outside the Senate in Ki Baratan.

\--

It took more than four years to end the war, yet the sixty days it takes for the Enterprise and its accompanying fleet to return back to Earth feels like an eternity. Sybok watches the subspace feed of their arrival in Selek's living room, sprawling across his couch while the old man prepares some Saurian brandy. It's not the proper and dignified and sober way to celebrate, but Sybok is, well, himself, and Selek is a strange half-brother from the future. Sybok still asks why he's preparing it.

"It is something I have shared with my Leonard McCoy," Selek answers, and Sybok shuts up and watches the news feed, because he really doesn't want to imagine any of that, especially if it involves them being old and drunk.

The drink has a little kick and a bit of burn, and it goes down warm, just as Sybok watches Spock and Kirk step off the shuttle and into the crowd. They make speeches Sybok only half-hears; he's more interested in watching how tired and battle-worn they are, and he completely tunes out when the feed switches to Vulcan pundits and his drink is gone.

"Did you ever do something like that?" he asks Selek.

Selek takes a moment to answer, like he always does, before answering, "No, I didn't." He has the same sadness in his voice when he refuses Sybok's questions about his counterpart's life and fate, and Sybok wonders how awful he must have been if the distance of years and a universe still won't allow him to talk about it.

He hopes he's better than that.

\--

The story is as old as time: when people return from a war, they return to their home planets, get married and have children—not necessarily in that order. What he doesn't expect is that this also affects his own father and Number One, who's been stationed on the colony for close to ten years now as Starfleet's liaison with the VDF. He really hopes they don't opt for children.

The wedding comes up quickly because he's not involved in it, too quickly that he almost doesn't have time to pick out the right clothes for the occasion. He buys a set of burgundy robes not only because he still likes the colour red, but because it's the traditional colour worn by the sons of their House, and Sarek tells him that he should. (Sybok thinks of rebelling for the hell of it—he has a hot pink shirt he never wears—but these robes are comfortable, and he's mended their relationship to the point where they can talk and Sarek's not trying to dissect his life.)

He still doesn't—can't watch them trade vows and bang gongs and touch each other's temples in that reverent way. So he waits outside and counts the minutes until the free food.

After the final gong echoes down the hall and the crowd spills into the outer courtyard, Sybok catches Spock's gaze from across the patio, and they meet on the outskirts of the property where lawn turns into river rocks and the flat top of the property slopes gently towards the water. The sun has already set, and a thin sliver of the amber moon appears in the sky. _Aikum_ , they called it. _Moon_ \--how original.

Sybok swirls the glass in his hand, looking out across the water before taking a sip. Water sweetened with rose. "How was the war?"

A beat, then, "Horrible." Spock lingers behind his peripheral vision.

"Was it worth it?"

"I would not have fought if it was otherwise."

"Of course." Sybok looks over his brother (he has a scar above his eyebrow Sybok doesn't remember), and then back towards the rest of the company on the patio. In the low light he can still see the faces of Kirk, McCoy, and Nyota, laughing and talking with the same exuberance he remembered before. "You're still married to her, correct?"

Spock nods.

"What about the other two?"

"We maintain a mutually beneficial relationship."

"Mutually beneficial enough to find out whether you could have three bonds or just one?"

A long silence passes between them with just the sound of the river and the murmur of distant conversation. "…Jim and Leonard are very generous individuals," he says, also shifting in place so he can look back at them. "And I am thankful that I can feel their joy now."

Sybok can't help but grin, and reaches out to pull his brother into a tight hug (though careful not to spill his drink). Spock stiffens. " _Sa-kai_?"

"What, I can't congratulate you for being married twice over?" Sybok laughs as he releases Spock, giving him a little squeeze on the shoulder for good measure.

"On that subject," Spock meets his eyes, "you are still unattached."

Sybok rolls his eyes and turns back to the river. "You don't really expect them to betroth me to any of these widows, do you, Spock?"

"They have allowed you into their society again; you could ask for that additional benefit."

"I don't need their benefits." Sybok's gaze flickers to the sky, his gaze listing away from the moon to the faint swathe of stars against the black. "I've already got someone in mind."

"Christine?"

"Maybe."

Spock looks at him, and Sybok can't help but smile a little, but doesn't elaborate. Spock lets out a breath through his nose and turns his back to the river. "You should know that I have not forgotten my pledge to you," he says, quietly. "And I will be returning the amplifier to you within the next month."

"You still have it?" His brows rise, just a little, in surprise; he didn't think the _Enterprise_ would carry things they didn't need, not into the battlefield. "Why would it take so long?"

"It has yet to be uninstalled."

" _What_?" That captures his attention completely, and he might be staring open-mouthed at Spock—who is positively smirking now, in a small human way that reminds Sybok of Jim Kirk.

Of course, he doesn't elaborate, and begins walking towards the patio again. "Nyota tells me Christine is currently in Chicago visiting her family—you may wish to visit her there." Spock throws the non sequitur over his shoulder to distract Sybok, but it doesn't work, no, and he takes a swig of his drink before jogging after Spock because he wants to know how the amplifier worked, how it handled—

"Do you have her comm number?" he asks instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masterpost at Dreamwidth [here](http://altilis.dreamwidth.org/8415.html), LiveJournal [here](http://altilis.livejournal.com/8415.html).
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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